Will be doing my first batch this weekend
I moved away from the paper towel to heated prop with tubs, my issues with the paper towel were handling the tiny plants.
Far easier with a heated prop
I found I got better germination in peat than in the towels anyway. But if you only have a few seeds then maybe the towel allows you to easily use them all, where as in peat unless you space well you can end up with some getting to close together and you can end up damaging some roots.
Or my other approach was a half way house. One of them plastic see through takeaway type tubs, small layer of peat, paper towel on top with seeds in and then another layer of peat over that.
This year I am going into see through pots again, and keeping them near the heated prop, but not directly on it.
I have a tube heater for the greehouse ready, I am going to try to breed tough plants this year by keeping them outside with minimum heat as much as possible. Will see how this works out
The presoaking is a good idea i think, that way the seed gets most of the water it needs early on, if you go for dry seeds in damp paper its easy to not really give them enough water, which can end up with failed germination as they do require a fair amount.
If using heated props you need to only germinate then move off, if you leave on for too long the become almost heat dependent and can fail once you remove the heat.
