Started the tomatoes and peppers a couple weeks early this year, mostly because I am concerned that the seed might be getting old and the envelopes they are in were wet at one point. I am confident enough to keep them around and try and use them, but needed a bit of a buffer to try again if needed. The Jung Seed Co. ones especially have been good old reliable seeds. I have had issues with Burpee seeds that were a few years old. So we will see what do and doesn't come up in the next couple weeks.
The technique I am using is the same as previous years. I have a light table setup with a starter greenhouse. The seeds are in a peat pot that are coin sized compressed peat the un-compress when you add water. There is just enough water to cover the bottom of the starter greenhouse. It should be enough until the seeds start. Being that the system is in the basement I have a space heater setup to warm the room up. I try to keep it around 70 to 75 F to start the seeds. The lights are on a timer for about 10 hours, anything more than that and the plants get thin and tall. I am thinking of lowering the time this year to maybe 9 to see how that changes things.
I have kept to just using up the seeds I have and I haven't added anything special to the group. I was a bit low on the number of pepper seeds and my fingers are crossed for those to survive. The only one that I have extra seed for is the Burpee Roma tomatoes. Which were good last year, but too small. Everything else I pretty much used the last of them. So if I want to continue to have them I will have to save seed this spring or order next year.