Take the whole cube out of the tray and crumble the dirt off and just separate and repot. Ihave done this thousands of times. (literally). Works best when the soil is not saturated.

I have also done it by removing cube and dunking in water till all dirt is gone separate and repot. Second method works best.

What podpiper said.

At this stage, his 1st suggestion is appropriate. The 2nd would come into play when the plants have more established root systems.

Kevin

I spent a few hours doing this on Sunday. Had two seedlings in each cell of a six-pack. Using a small table fork, I took out the entire contents of the cell. Then used the fork to split the soil between the two seedlings. In most cases, I had plenty of soil around each seedling. Then used the fork to transfer each seedling into a new cell and topped off with more soil. I found it worked best on the older seedlings that were developing a root ball. If the seedling was too young and only had a tap root, the soil tended to fall off leaving the seedling bare root. A couple of days later, all the transplants look fine with no transplant shock, even the ones that were bare root.

Nothing to it. It is a piece of cake. Others here gave you good directions. I would say: Take a sharp knife and cut the soil like cake, before taking them out. This is provided , they are at least an inch apart. Then scoop them out one by one.
On the other hand, after onions, peppers and tomatoes are transplant friendly.

That is good news. Thanks, all. I will separate them after work tonight.
I know that the greenhouse where I get my plants puts all of their tomato seeds in a flat -- with no compartments -- and then just pulls them apart when they're ~5" tall. And they have no problems with those. My peppers are quite a bit smaller, though. I was a little concerned and wanted to ask the "experts".

I think it depends on how valuable those bonus seedlings are to you.

I don't like breaking away much of the soil only because I don't want to mess with the strong one I want to leave in there undisturbed. yes, i've inadvertently killed the strong one in the past.

As long as the soil is moist, try just gently pulling out the bonus seedling, then stick it in another cup. The roots are still pretty small at that point.

Good luck! -E

I had pretty good luck dumping mine into a bowl of water, gently crumbling the soil by hand, and then very carefully grabbing the leaves of one plant and shaking under water until any attached plant let go.

Others will probably let you know why this is a bad idea or not. (my first year, so I don't really know if this is good or bad) I started with 7 seedling in a soda sized can and pulled them apart just as they started to get true leaves, and all 7 have survived. (There were some problems early on, but I've chocked that up to too much watering and light.)

Here's the post if you're interested in seeing the before and after.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/pepper/msg011712277540.html?3

I've been using nctomatoman's dense planting method for a few years and really like it. When the plants are just getting true leaves, they can take significant manhandling pretty well.

The link is to a video for transplanting tomato seedlings, but Craig (and I) has used about the same method for a number of crops, including peppers. It's fun.

Also, you don't need nearly as much heat mat space (or top of the refrigerator) using the dense method - seeds only need the heat until they have sprouted.

Go for it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Dense Planting - transplants

technochimp explained it perfectly.

spacetogrow, I too plant my toms that way. Saves a ton of space.

Well - it has been 2.5 days since I separated them and I haven't seen a single sign that they suffered at all. They all look super strong and I'm pretty sure they will all thrive.

Thanks everyone.