Independent reviews
We tell you what you actually get before you spend the money.
The Homestead Shelf reviews gardening, homesteading and preparedness products the way a friend who already owns one would: what is in the box, what the sales page glosses over, and who should not buy it.
Currently reviewing: the Medicinal Garden Kit.
Latest review
Medicinal Garden Kit Review (2026)
Ten heirloom herb seed packets and a printed guide for $59. Three of the ten are genuinely difficult from seed, and that is the thing to know before you order.
4/5$59Updated August 2026
What we do differently
We say when something is hard
3 of the ten herbs in the Medicinal Garden Kit are genuinely difficult from seed. Most reviews do not mention it. That is the kind of thing that decides whether you are happy with a purchase.
We do not claim tests we did not run
If we have not grown it, planted it or used it, we say so on the page. No invented trials, no stock photography passed off as our own results.
We check the claims
Credentials get verified against primary sources. Where other reviews repeat something inaccurate, we correct it and show our working.
Ten medicinal herbs, ranked honestly
Not all of these are beginner-friendly. Three need a month in the refrigerator before they will cooperate.
Growing guides
Practical, species-specific guidance — starting with the two that cause the most trouble.
How to Grow Calendula From Seed (The Easiest Plant in the Kit)
If you have never grown anything from seed before, start here. Calendula is quick, forgiving, and the one plant in this collection that is genuinely difficult to fail with.
How to Grow Chicory From Seed (Check Your Region First)
Chicory germinates in a week, tolerates drought, and comes back for years. Those same qualities are why it has naturalised across much of North America, so the first step here is not sowing.
How to Grow German Chamomile From Seed (Do Not Bury It)
Chamomile is one of the fastest and most generous plants in this collection, and there is exactly one way to get it wrong: covering the seed.
How to Grow Feverfew From Seed (And How to Stop It Taking Over)
Feverfew is easy to grow and easy to end up with far too much of. The skill with this plant is not germination — it is containment.
How to Grow Yarrow From Seed (And Why Year One Looks Like Failure)
Yarrow is genuinely easy to grow and genuinely frustrating to grow from seed, because everything it does in the first year looks like nothing happening.
How to Grow California Poppy From Seed (Direct Sow or Do Not Bother)
This is the one plant in the kit where the usual advice — start it indoors, transplant it out — is actively wrong. Get that single decision right and the rest is easy.
How to Grow Evening Primrose From Seed (Year One Is Leaves Only)
This is the most commonly misdiagnosed failure in the whole kit. Evening primrose does exactly what it is supposed to do in year one, and what it is supposed to do looks like nothing.
How to Grow Marshmallow Root From Seed (Stratify It, and Keep It Wet)
Marshmallow is one of the three genuinely difficult species in this kit, and it fails in two predictable ways: sown without cold treatment, and planted somewhere too dry.
How to Grow Echinacea From Seed (Without the Patchy Germination)
Purple coneflower is a genuinely rewarding perennial that most people get wrong at the very first step. The fix costs nothing and takes four weeks of doing nothing.
How to Grow and Germinate Lavender From Seed (And Why Professionals Usually Do Not)
If one packet in a herb kit disappoints you, it will probably be the lavender. That is the species behaving normally, and it is worth understanding why before you blame yourself.