Imagine waking up from a long nap. You'd probably need to comb your hair and brush your teeth. The same is true of your lawn after a long winter.

Paul DeJong from "Landscape Garden Center" says one of the first things to do in getting your lawn ready for the growing season is to get the garden rake or power rake out to clean out the excess leaves or bag them up with your mower.

Soil activator is a totally natural product that helps decompose the thatch and is a very natural fertilizer.

Crabgrass is ready to germinate, so you want to put crabgrass preventer plus lawn food down. But if you are doing any seeding - do not put down the preventer. It's one or the other.

If you are seeding, get a high quality grass seed. There are different grades and you always want to look at the total seed content and determine if it's a sunny or shady area you are going to be seeding.