What’s One Prep You Wish You Started Sooner?

BlueSkyWanderer

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May 6, 2025
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What’s One Prep You Wish You Started Sooner?

Wish I’d started a serious medicinal herb garden much earlier. Stockpiling OTC meds is fine, but those expire and supply chains aren’t a guarantee. Growing and learning to use things like yarrow, plantain, and echinacea takes time and trial and error. Now I’m playing catch-up, but it feels like a critical skill to have dialed in. Anyone else regret
 
Growing medicinal herbs is right up there with my biggest “should’ve done this sooner” moments. It’s not just about having the plants, but getting familiar with what to pick, how to dry them, the best ways to make tinctures, teas, poultices, all the rest. Some of the books make it sound simple, but in practice, every herb has its quirks. I fumbled my way through a couple of messy echinacea harvests before I figured out timing and preservation (roots vs flowers is a whole thing…). Wish I’d started way back, instead of relying so much on store-bought meds and just assuming they’d always be on hand.

It’s also been humbling to realize I do forget what I don’t practice. I’ve even set reminders to make sure I rotate and process what’s growing so it doesn’t go to waste. Would love to hear if anyone found a good system for keeping track—
 
Starting my rainwater collection sooner would’ve made a world of difference—water’s easy to take for granted till it isn’t. Anyone else wish they’d tackled water storage earlier?