@jkxw15, welcome to the forum! There’s all sorts of opinions about what works for everyone here and you will probably come up with your own system that works well for you after a few times memorizing your weeds.
You probably won’t mix up the characteristics because psychology tells us that reuse of images isn’t a problem. As far as using a story or a peg system (palace, MoL), you might decide to use both. You probably want to do a field identification more than a listing of the weeds so instead of just a set of palace pegs, there are a few types of structures I suggest to try out when there are uniform structures of data. A nurse recently wanted to remember patient data. Competitive memory athletes are tested against personal information. You can find the links on my post about using an abstract story.
Good luck!
Doug