I THINK I'm ready to transplant to an Autopot...help.

I have one NL auto that I planted and she broke ground on the 24th of Sept which makes her 8 days old today. I noticed that her leaves are almost the width of the solo cup and decided to take a look and see if she's got roots yet and sure enough there is one root sticking out of the bottom hole of the cup about 3/8"
It's time to transplant...right? I don't want a bunch of roots sticking out.

So...I just want to get things straight in my head before taking the next step..this sort of snuck up on me.
I water the destination container which is the Autopot until run-off. True?

I water the solo cup until run off....true?

Then do I wait until the next say or how long to transplant? I want the soil to be moist but not soggy...true?

I'm doing the double-cup method where the inside cup is slit up the side so I can just slide it out after the plant is in the soil..it has no bottom.

Please help asap...I don't want to wait too long...this one surprised me.

 

[Only1Sky]

Yeh. For my money, I'd transplant ASAP. Once you see the roots breaking out of the bottom (or lower side) of your germinating cup, then the cup has done its job and there's no benefit to waiting. Your roots need to get introduced to their final home. I generally do water the cup before transplant. But I'm a bit worried about soaking-to-runoff the destination pot just before transplant -- 'cause like you said, you want it moist but not soggy. So, given the time factors, maybe you could go a little lighter on watering the destination pot?? Just my 2 cents.

 

[Auto-Bud-Man]

Yeh. For my money, I'd transplant ASAP. Once you see the roots breaking out of the bottom (or lower side) of your germinating cup, then the cup has done its job and there's no benefit to waiting. Your roots need to get introduced to their final home. I generally do water the cup before transplant. But I'm a bit worried about soaking-to-runoff the destination pot just before transplant -- 'cause like you said, you want it moist but not soggy. So, given the time factors, maybe you could go a little lighter on watering the destination pot?? Just my 2 cents.

Well...the deed is done.
I was a bit rough with the seedling, it was difficult to get the solo cup slid back out after it went into the soil, it's tapered smaller bottom to top so it didn't want to slide out well.
I measured the width of the leaves and the height of the plant and took pictures so that I'd know and be able to quantify how much I stunted it by my clumsy transplant.

The link is in my signature if you want to see the pictures...page 9 of the thread.