Okay I'm being dead serious. Based on your location, your bermuda lawn will not be ready for leveling until July. Please reconsider your timing. I'd hate to see you back here in April wondering how to revive your bermuda. I have seen an improved variety of bermuda lawn smothered in the early spring by using too much compost. That lawn never did come back. Finally, 2 years later, the owner sold the house, and the new owner replaced the sorry looking lawn with St Augustine. Do you know who the experts are in leveling? It is the baseball community. Every professional baseball infield is leveled before every game so the multimillionaire athletes are not hurt by stepping on a clod or something. Check out this article on how they do it. Following close behind the baseball community is the rodeo community. They level their arena soil before every event all day long. They use the same sort of equipment but do not go to all the trouble the baseball people do. The key tool in their bag of tools is the drag. I made my own drag with a piece of chain link fence about 6 feet by 8 feet. I wired one edge to a 2x4 about 8 feet wide, tied a 12-foot rope to each end, and pulled the drag around behind me walking in every direction until I was happy (or was I exhausted???). It worked like a charm and saved uncountable man-hours of raking. I had to weigh down the drag to get a good effect in my sand. I think I used a couple more 2x4s and a bag of mulch (very scientific). Then if you really want to groom it, pull a rug behind you. You can get putting green perfection when you use the right tools. A rake is not the right tool. I am obviously not the person to ask about aerating and the whats and whens, but I always have an opinion. I would fertilize before aerating. If you fertilize afterward you would be dropping fertilizer into holes.

Thanks calistoga for the advice, I will leave them in there cells a little longer, but remove them from the bottom heat. It shouldn't be to hard to cut there cells away from the rest of the seed flat. I will just have to be careful not to jar the adjacent cells to hard. As for damping off, I am using an all natural product called Damp Aid. I mixed it into the growing medium before I sowed in the seed, and I also use it as a top dressing after watering. It has a wonderful sent to it, and so far seems to be working well. I also have good air circulation around the flat, the only draw back is that my soil drys out much faster so I really have to keep an eye on them. Thanks again for your advice, it is greatly appreciated!

Perhaps in the climate the link originated in, that method works. From over thirty years of actually doing it in MINE, not reducing water stress on any plant whose roots have been significantly disturbed, damaged or reduced is a sure way to severely impact the plant. Leaving the original top growth when the roots have been reduced results in loss of canes and foliage, perhaps even the failure of the plant in this climate. I would venture to suggest it might in others with the sun intensity, heat and accelerated transpiration rates similar to this one. If I transplant a four foot bush with only about a foot and a half of roots without reducing the top appropriately, this heat, sun and transpiration rate will induce the plant to wilt and begin eliminating foliage, softer growth and in many cases, harder, woodier canes until it re establishes roots to balance the tops to the bottoms. Cutting the top back to about the same mass as the root ball, keeping it well watered, even shading it with sheets, old tee shirts, cardboard boxes or soil, either as a mound over the remaining plant or held in place with a cylinder of cardboard until new growth begins showing, brings them through every time. IF transplanting can be accomplished during a period of sufficiently long rain, reducing the top growth isn't as critical. The lower temps, reduced sun intensity, higher humidity and the regular bathing by the rain maintains the moisture in the plant, tremendously reducing (even eliminating) the water stress. The provided link is from Washington State with their greater humidity, rain, reduced sun and transpiration rates. When the weather here is similar to that, I don't have to prune many roses and other plants to transplant them because of the conditions. Most of the time, it is NOT like that here and not reducing the top to match the bottom will jeopardize the plant. If the poster's conditions mimic those of Washington State's, perhaps they don't need to reduce the top to mitigate the negative effects of cutting off so many roots. But, if the conditions aren't similar to that rainy, cooler, damp, cloudy type, I personally wouldn't risk it. Kim

If you can lift the entire clump w/o doing much damage to the roots, you may not even need to transplant the foliage. Whenever I have to lift a plant and remove all the dirt from it - YES - trim the foliage, but if you can lift a clump and plop it right down into another freshly dug hole, you shouldn't need to cut back.