I did a little experiment this year to see the best way to germinate and start my garden veggies.
I took one batch of 8 squash and 8 green beens, 8 tomatoes, etc.
One batch I soaked for 48 hours in a folded napkin and wet the napkin then drained most of the water.
Once the
seeds popped, I put them in prepared peat pellets.
every one of these came up within 3 days (so 5 total).
The others I put straight into prepared jiffy peat pellots and watered and kept the peat moist.
These took 10 days and some took up to 14.
the other trick is you must keep your seedbeds warm. 68-72f. Im sure in this forum there are some places they talk about germination more.
Just wanted to add a real world take.
PS_ I did this in february and havent put out the stuff into the garden yet.
I am restarting more greenbeans because the first ones took off so fast, the cat decided to eat the leaves off of about 1/2 of them.