Epic Fail on old seed

Spring is coming, we've had daytime temperatures above freezing for almost a week now. The spring peepers are peeping in the marshy field next door, and the killdeer have returned and are practicing their decoy flights away from their nests.

 I turned on the lamps and heating pads in the seed starting rack of the unheated garage, and am getting a temp of over 60 degrees, so I am going to start some more seeds.

 Of the 72 cells planted with Liberty Garden cauliflower seed from 2006 and Ferry-Morse Barbados Hybrid broccoli from 2008, I had 2 seedlings germinate.  Not sure if it was because they were intermittently soaked/dried out in the dry forced-air environment of the living room, or if it was just old non-viable seed.

Replanted the same tray with new seed from this year, packed for 2014.

•  Ferry Morse Early Snowball X Cauliflower
•  Burpee Sun King Hybrid broccoli. 

Also planted 3 additional trays as follows:

• Livingston Seeds Pak Choi (2014)
• Burpee All Seasons cabbage (2014),
• Livingston seed Dwarf Blue Scotch Curled Kale (2014)
• New Dimension Seed Green Queen Kohlrabi (2009)
• Burpee Brussels Sprouts (Brawny) 2014. 
• Cook's Garden Romanesco Broccoli 2013
• Lake Valley Seed Broccoli Waltham 29 (2012)
• Burpree Cabbage Earliana ( 2014)

The package of Brussels Sprouts just planted 24 cells with about 4 seeds left over.  They should be higher quality since there were fewer seeds in the package! 180 mg vs. 6 g of seeds for the Kale. 

My farmgirl friend participating in the seed exchange sent me a nice selection of unusual seeds, purple-pod green beans,  watermelon radish (white on outside and red on inside), birdhouse gourds, Cherokee purple tomato.  I'll have to wait to start those till we can get out and till the garden.

I walked past the compost pile this weekend, since the snow has finally melted.  The two-year-old pile has some very black dirt.  I am anxious to spread it on the garden.  The garden itself has a lot of dried weed straw.  I am wondering if I will be able to burn the weeds/weed seeds with the propane torch before we try to till it.  The ground is very wet right now from the melting snow.  Too soon to till.