On Wed, 23 May 2007 13:11:25 -0700, Bill Rose wrote:

Kay, what would you think of lying the seedlings on a surface and using
a light spray (and I mean light, maybe a squirt bottle) of water to wash
away any soil that may be binding the roots together? Then, carefully,
replant with fresh potting soil.

I tried that once... all it got was severely tangled roots. Ditto my
attempts to wash the germination medium off the soil in a bowl of water.
I find the "grab a cotyledon on each of two plants and shake them gently
apart" method works the best for me, and it's what I've seen "pro"
greenhouse folks do when planting (at my best, I could never keep up
with the pros in seedling transplanting.)

I have gotten much better over the years at sowing seeds in seedpans
in nice straight lines with some space between the seedlings. We shall
not mention the year I sneezed and blew about 1000 petunia seeds into
about 4 square inches of soil. That was Not Fun to disentangle.

I'll "reprint" my old summary of how I start stuff from seed in a separate
post.

Kay