Well, you did it. Now you have a jar full of plants. Now what? Well, this is the hard part. If you do not do this correctly you will kill every last one of them. So take your time and ensure you get 100% of the media off. If not they will die. You also have to harden them off, if you just toss them out in the open they will die. It would be ashame to spend all this time and effort only to loose them in the end. But you would be amazed at how many people rush this process and then wonder why all their plants died. Take your time and do it right.
The first thing we need to do is gather the items needed. I use 2 dinner plants, one with a paper towel on it (not shown). Forceps, 2 bowls with room temp bottled sodium free water (1 not shown), pipette and scissors. Put the dinner plate with the paper towel on it and one of the bowls in the kitchen next to the sink. You'll need it before long.
If you used BAP your jar probably looks like this one, full of plants. This is one of three and they all came from one nidiformis leaf. It was started in BAP and transferred to plain media after 8 weeks. I divided them up before transferring to plain media. If I tried to maximize the survival rate I would have well over 1000 plants from one leaf. Glory be to BAP! No matter how many you have the process is the same.
The first thing I do is dump the jar out on a plate.
Then I drop the clump into the bowl of water
The water will help break down the media and helps get the plants free of each other. It also keeps them from getting shocked from lack of humidity. Each culture will react different. Just work with it and separate them out best you can. Sometimes you will need to cut them apart. Sometimes it helps to spray water in strategic locations with the pipette. Roots to at least some degree are needed, if they have no roots you need to get them back into plain TC or into a rooting media. I remove them one by one and place them on the plate. Pull or cut them apart, the less cutting you do the better off you'll be. This can be time intensive.
If they are going to be laying on the plate more than a few minutes you should mist them pretty good to keep them from drying out. Once I have several plants laid out I take them to the kitchen.
Turn on the sink water, you want a gentle but solid flow of luke warm water. Support the plantlet well. You MUST rinse ALL of the media off. One spec will mold and kill the plant. You want to do this in as little time as possible but take the time you need. There is no room for error here. Close will not do, they must be 100% media free.
As you get them rinsed off place them on the plate with the paper towel on it. The towel will get quit wet pretty fast. That's ok. It will help pull a lot of the tap water off of them. It also lets them cool back down to room temperature.
After you get the first batch rinsed well transfer them from the paper towel plate into the second bowl of room temp bottled or RO sodium free water. This will rinse the rest of the tap water off.
Then you have good clean plants ready to go in soil.
Just keep repeating the process until you have them all done. They can sit in the bowl of water for several hours while you get the rest ready. How you proceed from here is up to you. Whatever you do don't put them in sterilized soil, fungus/mold will run rabid. Instead spray the soil down good with a fungicide and spray the plants and soil again once the plants are inserted and complete.
If I have a lot of plants I like to use humidity trays to start them out in. I fill the bottom with soil, generally 50/50 peat/perlite. This is just a temporary home while I get them hardened off. I prop the front open a bit and slowly increase the height of the opening over a week or two.
If I only have a few then I will go ahead and pot them up and place a plastic bag over the pot. I put a rubberband around the bag to hold it tight to the pot. Then I cut a small piece of the corner off the bag off. Every couple days I make the hole bigger until they are acclimated down.
