Since I’m an apartment dweller who gets about four hours of direct sun on each side of my house when the time of the year is right, my experience on seed-sowing might apply broadly to apartment dwellers alone. Also, my own experience deals with seeds that do not require the dark to germinate, nor those that require special/additional processes such as stratification.
I find that the best and most reliable methods of all which I have tried is this: germination of seeds in pure vermiculite moistened with hydroponics solution, covered up and left in a bright place (not in direct sun, or the insides will overheat and kill the seeds/seedlings instead). You may transplant the seedlings after that. It looks like this:
Since there is a need to save space, the sowing of seeds in either pure hydroponics or semi-hydroponics is also a method which might be adopted. In this case, one can use a small thumb pot, thread a string of twine through its base, fill the pot up either with soil/soil + vermiculite/pure vermiculite, and lower it sitting onto a spare plastic bottle which has been filled with the solution mixed with water (somewhat like this, without the plants there). Then, wrap the pot up with cling wrap, and also leave it in a bright place. You might wish to drip some water on the soil first as a kick-start:
Most of the seeds I sowed in these two ways sprout with a high chance of success.
