Hey, /r/Adenium friends! I will preface this with I am a novice when it comes to plants.

I've purchased two adeniums in the past year and love the plant immensely. I've tried growing from seedlings three times now with no success. I purchased my seeds from KO. Here is what I've done so far in my three batches:

Batch 1: soaked seeds overnight - planted them in cactus soil with 20-20-20 osomote fertilizer. Lightly covered with more soil. Watered soil. Kept out of direct sunlight. Covered container with plastic wrap. It never needed more water since initial watering, as the soil was always moist when I checked. Planted in September 2020. 10 seeds. No germination. Very foul odor.

Batch 2: Soaked seeds overnight in water with fungicide. Placed in a plastic ontainer on wet paper towel. Covered with paper towel (also wet). Sealed container. Kept in non-direct sunlight. No germination for weeks. Finally about 4 weeks later, two had something peeking out of the seed. It was white, not green. No growth since then. Moved possible germinated seeds to cactus soil. No growth since. Planted around October, moved to cactus soil 2 weeks ago.

Batch 3: Soaked seeds for 4 hours. No fungicide. Used paper towel method again. No growth. Been about a week and a half.

What am I doing wrong? I'm seeing a lot of methods online on how to propogate. What works best for everyone? The only thing I can think of that might be of issue with mine is temperature. We do keep the heater on most days, but I'm also in a 9b zone in California (north). Does anyone have any suggestions? In all my batches, there has also been a pretty foul odor.