Start Your Backyard Pharmacy Now
On day 42 of a wilderness survival show, with no antibiotics anywhere in her camp, she sliced her hand open gutting a fish. She did not order anything, she did not radio anyone, she simply walked a few steps and picked the fix off the ground.
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Day 42, a fish knife, and nothing in the first aid kit
The woman is Nicole Apelian, Ph.D., a biologist with a degree from McGill University, an herbalist, and a survival skills instructor. She was filming the History Channel show Alone in 2015 when the knife went into her own hand instead of the fish. She describes the wound as very deep, with no antibiotics on hand. By her account she found yarrow, wrapped it around the cut, the bleeding stopped in minutes, and today there is barely a scar. She lasted 57 days out there.
Start Your Backyard Pharmacy Now
Here is the part that should bother you slightly. She did not have better gear than you. She recognised a weed. The whole distance between her and most people reading this is about ten square feet of soil and knowing what is growing in it, which is exactly what the seed kit she built afterwards is for.
The question you only ask at the worst possible moment
Nobody thinks about this at 2 in the afternoon. You think about it at 3 in the morning, when a kid has a fever, when a tooth starts throbbing, when your knees have gone stiff again and the nearest open pharmacy is a thirty minute drive that you are not going to make tonight. Apelian puts it plainly on her page: your backyard pharmacy will be there even in times of crisis when regular pharmacies might be closed or looted.
That is the same instinct that pulls people toward a fully self sufficient backyard or toward stocking a joint supplement and a jar of topical relief cream in the cupboard for the bad weeks. Nothing wrong with any of it. The difference is that a jar runs out and a garden does not. And I will tell you before the end which of the ten plants I would put in the ground first, because it is not yarrow.
Start Your Backyard Pharmacy Now
What is actually in the box
Ten herbs, as seeds, handpicked from what she calls the very best plants. Not capsules, not a tea sampler. Seeds, which means the thing renews itself every season instead of shipping again.
With them comes a free copy of the Herbal Medicinal Guide: From Seeds to Remedies, and this is the piece that makes the kit usable rather than decorative. It walks through turning those ten plants into tinctures, ointments, salves, poultices, decoctions, infusions and essential oils, written for someone who has never made an herbal remedy in their life.
The recipe lists are unusually specific. For chicory alone: a salve for pain relief, chicory coffee for digestion, a decoction for adrenal fatigue, an infusion for sinuses, an anti fungal poultice, a liver protection tincture. For yarrow: infused oil for swelling and varicose veins, a stop bleeding poultice, a tincture for burns, cuts, bruises and insect bites, a salve for old scars, an elixir for cramps and heartburn, a tea for digestive upsets. California poppy gets a sleep tea she drinks before bed, which she offers as an alternative to prescription sleeping pills rather than a prescription of her own. Two bonuses are included free at the time of writing.
Start Your Backyard Pharmacy Now
The proof, named, so you can check it yourself
You do not have to take a stranger's word for any of this. Nicole Apelian is a named, findable person: biology degree from McGill, years lived in the Kalahari with the San Bushmen, 57 days survived on Alone in 2015, diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at 29, and by her own account the last 20 years spent managing that condition with remedies she grows in her own backyard. Those are her claims about her own life, not a promise about yours, and she frames the garden as what she tries first rather than a replacement for a doctor. Go read her story, then come back and look at the ten plants she chose.
The honest notes
The sales page runs a fifty minute countdown and tells you the last kits are going. Treat that theater as theater. The seeds are the product, and they will still be seeds in an hour.
Start Your Backyard Pharmacy Now
You also will not see this one in your Facebook feed or in Google ads, because the vendor does not permit paid advertising on those platforms. It reaches people through pages like this one instead. And the promised plant: chicory. Native Americans reportedly sought it out more than any other, the root carries chicoric acid, and one tablespoon of the ground root in your coffee is the single easiest thing on this list to actually start doing.
Plant the ten and in one season you stop being the person who has to wait until morning. Get the kit and the free remedy guide today, because you have already had one of those nights where the answer was thirty minutes away and closed, and you promised yourself it would not happen twice.
Heads up: if you buy through a link on this page, Toughest Blogger earns a commission from the vendor, and you pay nothing extra for it.
Start Your Backyard Pharmacy Now
People also ask
What do you actually receive with the Medicinal Garden Kit?
Seeds for 10 medicinal herbs, described by the vendor as handpicked from her best plants, plus a free copy of the Herbal Medicinal Guide: From Seeds to Remedies, which covers turning those plants into tinctures, ointments, salves, poultices, decoctions, infusions and essential oils. Two bonuses are listed as included free.
Who is behind it?
Nicole Apelian, Ph.D. She holds a biology degree from McGill University, works as an herbalist and survival skills instructor, lived for years in the Kalahari with the San Bushmen, and survived 57 days on the History Channel show Alone in 2015. She says she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at 29 and has spent the last 20 years managing it with remedies she grows herself.
Do I need gardening experience to use it?
The vendor writes the remedy guide for someone who has never made an herbal medicine before, in her words in minute detail. The kit is seeds, so you still need soil, water and a season of patience. If you want something you can swallow this week instead of grow, this is the wrong product for you.