Quote Originally Posted by stinkyattic
At this point I usually advise people NOT to try to break up the plants. When you re-pot, train them AWAY from each other. When males show, DON'T yank them; cut them off instead.
Not that I'm arguing, but it works for me.
When times warrant, I will start two seeds per 1 cup pot, just to make sure all the pots have at least one seedling. I keep them this way till I transplant into a 1 gallon pot, at which time I coax the small rootball apart, and re-pot into seperate pots. Kinda like an insurance policy. I hate bare spots under the lighs.
Have gently done it many, many times. No worse that skewering the roots with a bamboo stake, trying to find the right position for it. Yes, I usually hear some roots 'snap', but I try and keep it to a minimum, and very rarely see any problems as a result.
Granted, you don't want to just rip 'em apart, but I would much rather seperate them before they grow up mainly because the dying roots of the cut-down plant start to rot, don't they?