In my experience, I have found that planting a cut into a beer cup as soon as a root ot two pop out of the jiffy/rapid rooter leads to the quickest veg growth. However, Jorge Cervantes advocates lots of long roots coming out the jiffy/rockwool/etc prior to transplanting.
I would think that the cutting would be happier getting some soil to spread it's roots out in and getting some light feeding...so how much roots are you guys waiting for?
Its all on your situation on whens the best time to transplant in my opinion. In my situation I had clones for too long in comparison to their sisters by a week and they start pooping out from the heat mat I had. So for me a rapid transplant works well. Some can keep clones going forever getting massive roots. You could easily do this by a double clone tray. The normal tray with no holes at the bottom having perlite spread out evenly and heavily saturated with water. The top tray of exact same size but its shallow and it has a grate like surface. The humidity for the roots will make it go nuts and they can pull water if they start getting bigger than the rest.
I think transplanting to "soil" right when you see roots popping is best so you don't compact the loose roots in transplant, but don't think it would have much diff in hydro?
i treat starters like most other transplants. you shouldnt have a massive ammount of roots sticking out the side but more that one or 2. i have done the one or 2 thing and they survive but take alot longer to take off after the transplant into happy frog. i would say that you dont want massive roots sticking out but a nice little root set sticking a fair ammount of roots out the side is good.
dont transplant before you see roots even if it is rooted, it will die or be worthless compared to the others. it might make it but wont be nearly as strong.
i just take cuts dipem and put them in square pots or keg kups full of happy frog and i transplant about 7-14 days before the flip shit i even germinate my beans directly in keg kups without popping taproots nowadays
I usually transplant when I get a good amount of roots. Recently, I was in a rush and transplant a clone into soil that only had 1 root sticking out. Next day, it had wilted, so I took it out of the soil, cleaned it up and gave it a couple of days to get some more roots poppin. Now I hope it didn't mess it up too much but it's growing really good now. and with transplanting in general, I like them to fill out whatever they're in before moving them up into a bigger pot
I don't do it when it's wet, because when I take it out of it's container, I don't want the heavy weight pulling on the roots, and I don't do it when it's dry because well it's too dry. I water a day or 2 before transplanting so when I do, it's about ready to be watered, but not at a point where it's dry. Plus I water with B1 before and after the transplant
your method would give you more steady growth but jorge's method would cause a growth spurt once it went into the cup same theory to the one Gallon size then when that pot is rootbound then go to a three gallon. a good mesure of thumb is 1 gallon soil per foot of height on your plants and i allow a month or so of vegetative growth per foot expected on final plant .