Mitch Baker: Hi! I am Mitch Baker with American Plant and we're talking about April Gardening Tips. Now it's time to talk about our lawns. This is the time of the year when we get outside in our garden and we look at our lawns and coming out of the winter lawns may not be looking quite like we'd like them to look. So, there is something we can do about it and now is the perfect time.

First step would be to rake that area hard so that you dislodge any material that has collected over the winter, so any leaves or sticks or thatch or dead grass, go ahead and rake all that up real hard to expose the bare soil.

Next step overseed with the correct type of grass seed for your area, so that seed needs to come into contact with the soil surface that's why you are raking the soil to get rid of everything. If you've done a PH test and determined that lime is needed, go ahead and get that lime down now, that lime is going to raise the PH, make it more favorable for the grass to grow, less favorable for weeds to grow.

An application of a low-fertility organic fertilizer, a lawn food, is a good idea at the same time you are seeding as well. Now this depends on what you got down in the fall or didn't get down in the fall. But if fertilizer is called for, it can happen at the same time you are putting the seed and/or the lime down, it can all get down on the same day.

Next step would be to apply a thin layer if some sort of composted organic matter to nestle in around that seed and hold the seed in place to prevent it from washing away, to protect it from the birds, hold the moisture in around it. And then a daily light watering is necessary for seed germination. That seed has to be consistently moist, so watering lightly, daily is necessary for germination. Germination might take 10 days, 14 days, might take 21 days, depending upon soil temperatures.

Germination is based on not just air temperature but soil temperature and available moisture. I hope these April Gardening Tips will help get your garden and lawn in great shape for the rest of the season.