FYI: I have found live Basil, Cilantro and Rosemary plants in the fresh veggie aisle at Walmart for about $3.00. I bought a few each, then put back the $5 plants in the nursery section. ;)
I must not be the only one, because they stopped selling them there, LOL!
At Jung’s I used to make up ‘Fresh Herb Bouquets’ in water and place them at the check out, with a few flats of the herbs nearby. Irresistible! Worked like Catnip on my ‘demographic’ Lady Customers. ;)
In my never-ending quest to use up our ridiculous abundance of eggs, I made this casserole for Brunch, today. Beau is off felling some trees for a client, so he’ll appreciate something warm and ‘eggy’ when he gets back on this chilly, rainy Spring morning.
Hash Brown Breakfast Casserole*
https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/hash-brown-egg-bake/
Will serve with a glass of OJ, English Muffins, and either Yogurt or Cottage Cheese & Fruit.
*All it had for spices was salt, so I jazzed up the flavor using ‘Devilish Dill’ from The Spice House. Lisa Steele, who has a GREAT chicken website (Fresh Eggs Daily) created it for them. It’s really good!
https://www.thespicehouse.com/products/devilish-dill-lisa-steeles-egg-seasoning
I checked those $2.98 plants at Walmart today - all they had was parsley, cilantro & basil, none of which I am interested in trying to keep alive until I have raised beds & warmer temps.
What I did buy at Walmart:
2 packages of jalapeño seeds (different brands)
Kelvin Floodlight dahlia tubers for $5.42 (2 tubers in pkg)
1 rosemary plant & 1 lavender plant, each $4.68 (marked down from $5.98)
They did not have oregano, thyme, marjoram, sage, etc. They had basil (half dead from cold) & mint, which I do not want in my garden (will grow in pots at some point).
The Co-op had more like sage, thyme, etc. but they were just under $6 like the Bonnie plants at Lowe’s. The only rosemary they had was a 1 quart size for $11.99 & I was a hard pass on that - found the smaller one at Walmart which was the 2nd stop after the Co-op.
We have 2 butterfly bushes that were just leafing out & the 25° temp the other night got them. They will put out more leaves, but having to do that means they’ll get a slower start. The hostas in pots at the front of the house look pretty good. A couple of leaves were obviously affected, but the rest look great - these are giant hostas & if the deer don’t get them, they will be beautiful on each side of the sidewalk at the porch.
BTW, last Lenten dinner was last night. I took baked beans. It was a 9x13 pan - no leftovers! Several people told me how good they were. The lady in charge of the food was one of those people & she also said ‘they’ (other food committee ladies) looked forward to what I was bringing every week because it was all so good. Wow - that made all the work worthwhile for sure & I think I have carved a small little niche out for myself among the cooks at church!
Here is that baked bean recipe:
Anastasia’s Best Ever Baked Beans
https://sweetlittlebluebird.com/anastasias-best-ever-baked-beans/
I drain one can of the beans, but leave the other 4 undrained
I use 1/4 cup of brown sugar - that is sweet enough for me.
I baked this last batch for 3 hours - recipe time is 2-3 hours.
Our Menards finally got in a limited supply of 6-packs of tomato plants. The “generic” packs are $2.99 / pack. Variety selection was pretty good though, for a typical big box garden center and not a lot of plants: I picked up a pack of Mortgage Lifters (they are well “ahead” of mine started from seed), a pack of Lemon Boys (have never tried them before), and a pack of Better Boys. The latter 2 have multiple sections of multiple plants, so I’ll have to do some dividing - I usually have pretty good success with that. Outside of tomatoes there were a few six packs of peppers -mostly “hot” varieties of which I have plenty (Thai), some cabbage, and some various herbs, and that was about it. Lots of display space was still unoccupied.
I also “broke down” and nabbed one 4” pot of “Bonnie” orange bell (sweet) peppers that had a “2-fer” (2 plants in a pot), about 3/4” apart. Variety and supply of the 4” pots looked pretty good, but I think they were all $4.98 - too high for me! I messed up though and forgot to look for Japanese eggplants for my wife - I’d have bought a “2-fer” if they had any.
Luckily* for Menards, we got pretty close but didn’t “frost” last night. I’d covered a few plants I left outside, but, our Menards this time had a lot still out “unroofed”.
*”Luckily” I think — they are 20 minutes ESE of us and it was supposed to be cooler to the east. Usually WE would be ~2 degrees cooler.
My trial separating of the lettuce starts I mentioned previously went well: 2 plants are doing great, and one that looked a little dubious a day later is coming around. I’ll try separating the rest today if I can get to them. In all these cases of separating starter plants, it’s a bit tedious to not damage the roots too badly...
It looks like we have a couple weeks of pretty good weather coming up, so long as we don’t get destructive storms. In the case of the garden, hail is the big risk. We are drying out a bit, finally, but several roads in the area are closed due to high water - I had to detour last night coming home, because of that.