 We are building our dream garden. Our goal is to grow enough food that we can save thousands of dollars at the grocery store. How are we going to do that? By growing food from kitchen scraps. One week the celery's been growing. From seed and transplants. Last week we constructed these beds from milled wood and planted 280 seeds in the greenhouse. We're doing the hoogle culture method, which is a centuries old gardening technique building garden beds from decaying logs and plant debris. These beds provide long-term nutrients and moisture to plants and generate heat that can extend the season. Let's begin. Look at this girl. Ready? She's so ready to go. Let's hit the trails, Mom. Come on, have fun and find some debris for the garden beds. I think we've already found a lot of debris. My seat's going to get taken up very quick. Boom. Not only are we getting debris for our garden beds, but we are cleaning up our entire neighborhood. All of this debris is from hogging the road. What is hogging, you ask? Hogging is when a bunch of us come out every year to maintain the road so they don't overgrow. And I'd say there ain't any broader name than hogging. I shoddy this bed. No, we're doing it together, you f***er. Orma. She calls me the A-word and rolls her ankle. Karma, karma, karma, karma. Got it? Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma, karma. Get me my wheel, we're out. I'm fast as I thought. Yes, I know what you're thinking. You're going to save thousands of dollars of food, but we'll look at the startup here. You're right, it is a big startup. Not only in money, but also in time. However, these hemlock garden beds are going to last a long, long time. One of these six by six posts costs us $20. If we went to the hardware store, it would cost over $200 per board, which is not OK. So I challenge all of you, when you are doing a DIY project, renovations, try to source out milled wood. Find your local mill, support them, because you don't even understand the deals you can get. These wood chips are from a mill, because after they mill the wood, they have so many wood chips that they basically just want to give them away. Let's address the elephant in the room or the garden. To make our garden dreams come to life, we ordered a bunch of material. Wood chips being the first. Garden soil. Manure! Just kidding. Last year, we forgot to put this in our garden and it didn't grow that well. This year, we have green thumbs. But we accidentally ordered three times the amount, so we've got a lot of work ahead of us. Also, wanted to show you all, look. Look it out, little baby. God, you're filling the bed! Keep going, Bear and Dig! Just keep going, just keep going. Well, the garden beds are just going to get harder and harder as we get farther away from the pile of garden soil. And I am a big advocate of working smarter, not harder. This could take me all day. But this is basically... This makes our plow into a bucket, so we can literally scoop up soil, bring our winch up, and dump in the garden beds. As Jasmine pushes forward, adjusting our plow, I've got my handy-dandy shovel and fill up the first garden bed with topsoil. Unfortunately, our used UTV plow wear bar has rusted and seized the bolts. And after a difficult time removing them, we have one problem. I got the wrong conversion kit. That's so sad. I swear, I measured 55. Look, and a little small. Plot twist. There ain't no bucket. Well, I have a backup. I listened to our pack, and guess what, everyone? We finally took your advice, and we got a gorilla dump cart with four wheels. It's about time. This ain't no bucket on a plow, but it's gonna have to do. This is gonna help us so much, too, by the way. Your optimism is just infectious. And thank you to all of you who left hundreds of comments about our wheelbarrow and what it means to have a cart, because I am so sure that box just cracked. I'm so sure. This is what we need. Hey, Bella, you gonna clean that up? Gorilla, gorilla, gorilla, go, go, go. Walk the runway, girl. Crystal, fashion show. The idea with the bucket is that we won't have to break our backs in trouble. But, Crystal, whoa. Gorilla. That's mighty fine. You know, that wheelbarrow can do the splits, man. Yeah. This is a big garden. By no means do you need to start this large. You can even have a balcony and grow food on it. You don't need a ton of space to be able to grow enough food for yourself or your friends and family. It's incredible what you can do with even small square footage. So I hope that encourages you to start growing and at least give it a try. And maybe throughout this gardening series and this year as we learn and we share knowledge, you'll feel like you can do it too. It's also important to mention that over time it does become more economical. And with food prices on the rise, it's never been a better time to invest in growing your own food. Just look at these prices. As you plant your vegetables and your fruits, you can then start saving seeds. Definitely saving all of those seeds. And then it becomes a full cycle where you're now growing your own seeds and, you know, then you're collecting compost and putting that compost in your garden for nutrients. So then you can create your own little system, which is amazing. You see these old potatoes that you probably throw away? We started saving them. This is a grow bag. Six old potatoes can turn to 40 by planting them four to six inches in the soil. We love potatoes. We're saving all our food, green onions, celery, ginger, and more. This is a great place to get to. Oh yeah. All righty, that seems like a dream to move. All righty, y'all ready? Hopefully I can lift it. Oh wow. Oh no. It's really heavy. I don't think I can do it that big again. Help. This is the 32 ounce bottle bottle suited to take wherever you'd like, but more importantly for the outdoors and working out. These are double walled stainless steel, BPA free and dishwasher safe water bottles that keep your water cold up to 24 hours and your hot beverages up to 12. The reason I love it is because of the full functioning mouthpiece with the option of a straw. I like to use a straw and crystal, the handle and the storage box. You can use this to carry almost anything. Pills, vitamins, powders, tea, protein, all right in here nicely organized with that divider. Or if you have a freaking panion, you can use it as a drinking dish for them. Click on the link in the description and use code VanWive's 15 for 15% off your own bottle bottle. Thank you to Bottle Bottle for sponsoring this week's video. It's barbecue season, baby. One more bed down. Doing good. Oh gosh, I love this time of year. It smells so good when you're outside and you get real hungry. I kind of hungry. How do you season? Haven't had this since last year. Oh my gosh. This is so good. Gotta refresh this. We ate just in time because I was really losing steam and now I'm ready. Don't you mean to say you were becoming? Grastow. I was becoming grastow. Mm-hmm. It's heavy. Are you in four wheel? Yeah. I pinched my winch in. It's not so weird, eh? I pinched my winch in. I pinched my winch in a skid. Can't get it out. So the only way I could think of getting it was I was wasting a lot of time and something I have to do already. Unload the million bags of manure. Crystal ordered. Here we go. After some much needed fuel, we set our sights on finishing the garden beds and give Bella a little joy ride. Okay, that dog is too much. Honestly, like I had to stop shoveling. You just admire how adorable she is. Like they are truly just a human's best friend. She is glued to Jasmine's side right now. So cute. And Asi's just watching them go up and down and up and down. She's just sitting there, as content as could be. Oh, they're such characters. You did all the work. Ew, girl. I don't want no back five. Get the rod out of here. Oh, this is sheep poo, better known as manure, which is going to make our vegetables thrive and survive this year. And that's how we're gonna save so much money in groceries because we're gonna have so much food. When you're here. I'm taking a garden course. In my garden course. And in the first line of soil health is as above so is below. Is that how it goes? Pardon? Blame this dude. What does it say? As above so below they say. Meaning that soil health is so incredibly important and everything that you see growing out of your garden beds is a direct correlation to what is beneath it. So. I understand the quote now. Soil is very complex, very beautiful thing. It is so much more than what we typically think it is. It's incredible actually. And it provides so much benefit for the plants and making sure that you have really high quality nutrients in your bed is super important. I realized that these beds are looking quite full but given a day or two and they are gonna settle. So we are filling them to the brim but we know that they're gonna settle quite a bit with the material that's in there. She's only saying that because all day I've been saying Crystal, these beds are so full. And she's told me 20 times they're gonna settle. We're gonna stab all these bags open like Meredith Gray. Here we go. Shit, you going to med school? Here you go. Let's play Gray's Naughty right now. Ready? Scalpel please. You don't need to use your manners. Hardcore Gray's fan right here. Is it a good shit girl? Yeah, it's good shit. Literally shit. As the sun sets and night draws near we spread the manure across our garden beds. Adding manure improves soil health and provides key nutrients needed by growing plants. This is what a day of fun looks like and hard work. And you did most of the work. Good job. Looks like you had a good day. Fun day. Playing in the dirt. Morning. My winch is pinched still and we need the UTV today because we have pretty fine to do. Let me tell you about my best friend. Oh my God, Bear. Yes, we're in the same outfits because we're dirty. Take another beautiful day, I finally figured it out. It's amazing how light wood chips are compared to soil. This is glorious. Good thing you didn't start with wood chips. We're filling the garden with that absolute mountain of chips. And it looks so nice just to see the first pile sitting back there. It's gonna really pull it together. What? The UTV won't turn on. Nothing's even lighting up. Crystal! No, no, no, no, no, no, no. If we have to move everything with that freaking gorilla car, let me tell you, we'll be making lunch again today. UTV doesn't work. Lovely. Now what? Our shed is such a mess and full of projects that we have no idea where our jeffer cables are. But it is the weekend, which means a neighbor could be up. So fingers crossed, Crystal. She's back. No cables, no neighbor, no cables anywhere. Battery charger? You've loved the ATVA. Haven't been in here in a while. I know. Any luck? Still there. Like, still there, 10 minutes later. Look, there's a serious look on you, too. Hello. Like, who are you? The world just wants us to work harder this weekend. Time to be a UTV. For once, I can find something. And Crystal can't. Okay. Let's trickle charge this battery. Battery. It's completely dead. Okay, well, I would like to do anything but be a UTV today. What do you want to do? But I really want to see it all. We can do it. I'll do it, how about you film me? We're being crustals. We need to change our attitude. We're gonna put our heads down and we're gonna go ham, ham cheddar. You ready, Crystal? Half-babbling. You happy? It looks so good. It looks so good. Love the color, the natural material on the ground just looking so pretty against the beds. Good work. You, too. We crushed that. A little soda break, soda water, and then wrap up the ends. There is never been a better time for hot tub than after building this garden. We deserve it. So let's do it. Fill this up for later. With the hot tub warming up for later to soothe our exhausted bodies, we pushed through to cover the final area of wood chips. We've been fueled by the excitement of completing the garden and to bring many spaces to life at the cabin this year. I don't know how we have the energy to do this right now, but here we are. No, I don't even know how to work the camera I'm so tired right now. Sorry if that was blurry. That was 100% blurry. We're planting greenery everywhere we can this year. Wow, words are hard now. It's been a long day. That's because this winter, when everything died, we were very sad. And so something like this is gonna remain and you'll see that little bit of greenery all year round, which is so nice. Where's your inspo coming from? A dental office that I passed by. I really just love their garden. It's like one of those gardens that, you know, all year round looked so beautiful. And every time I drove by, I was like, what's in there? Thank you, dentist office. My sister is ridiculous. I might sound like a broken record, but it just amazes me that we don't have to pull a generator anymore to get water out of our hose. And we can water our garden with the sounds of nature. Can never get over it. It's so nice. As we find new homes for these plants to grow their roots, we got inspired to trim the garden with birch logs as a simple final touch. And after hours of hard work, we are one step closer to the garden of our dreams. Garden area is looking beautiful. So the vision here is there's gonna be a nice tall grass, nice tall seeded trees, low lying, spreading junipers. Just a copycat, eh? Just a copycat. Damn nice dentist office. Just about time to plant. Tomorrow. I am completely beat right now. And Chris is like, oh, I'm gonna get these plants in this garden. She thrives in this type of weather. Just suns out, curses out. She is not gonna come inside anytime soon. We deserve this. It's so nice being able to get in while it's still bright outside. That's a treat. The sun is just setting. So much for deserving a hot tub. That was a complete fail. That was lukewarm. Actually kind of cold. I can't believe you. It's not my fault. After a complete fail last night and a long day's work, we finally get to enjoy the hot tub. I get in. Good morning, sugar. This is another day I've been dreaming of all winter. I am so excited to be here. The greenhouse is open. The plants are growing. They're fully stocked. And this is my ideal day. It's so humid in here. I feel like I'm in the tropics. It's actually like 35 degrees. It's really nice to see all the little baby plants coming in the way. We're strolling through the greenhouse. Of course we've made it to the seed section. We're picking up a few extra seeds that we didn't have. New things that we wanna try and experiment and grow. A few tomatoes are a couple dollars and a package of seeds is a couple dollars. And you can grow multiple plants and have dozens and dozens of tomatoes. You can't go wrong. Just getting really into it. Really into the gardening lately. You sure love planting. You're already out here. Okay, can we do a quick before and after of this greenhouse? Because I think within a few hours it's gonna look a heck of a lot better than it does right now because there's so much work to do in organizing in here. If you missed last week's episode we talked all about why we had to shut the greenhouse down last winter. But we are getting it so prepared that we won't have to this winter. Hopefully, if all goes as planned with our re-sauch. It's time to get this greenhouse up and running because those seeds are going to be ready within just a few weeks before we even know it. We've got quite a few sprouts. You'll be excited to see. It's growing season. Woo-hoo. Woo-hoo. I'm tired. I know. Driving to town. It's two hours of driving. That's why I'm tired. Super stoked but also a little bit slippy. Okay, well, maybe we should have hit the laundry mat but here we are. We're saving all of our food, everyone. It's literally that simple to grow back your green onions. I ate the other half. They're gonna keep on growing. Ready for- Clean, clean, clean. It smells good. It's fresh. The beds are filled. The floor he's in. Also the quickest floor we've ever laid. Yeah, that's pretty nice. Does it ever change? It brightens it up in here. Basil and parsley like to be together and they're right beside each other. Would you look at that? That's great. And gardening school is paying off, girls. So by having this greenhouse, we're able to have food sooner. But of course we did get some mature plants while we were out at the greenhouse. That way our food is going to be ready in cycles which I think is super important. In my gardening experience, everything is done all at once because I plant it all at once. But if you do it in cycles, it just makes your life a lot easier, your belly happier and your plants happier because you actually have time to take care of all of them. Ooh la la, la la la la la la la la la la la la. We were going to be saving thousands on food due to the fact that we can grow year round. We can get an early start. We can start harvesting. And you're probably wondering why aren't we planting all of the food out in our beds? Well to be honest in Canada, it's still very cold at night and they wouldn't survive. So having the greenhouse, we're able to get an early start, planting these in, and then we probably will start moving our seedlings out there. And it just makes a nice cycle. Voila. The greenhouse is officially planted. It is 30 degrees in here. That is the highest temp we've had this year so far. I feel like I'm in the tropics. Good food coming our way. And if you're planting something, let us know what you've got going on on your balcony, in your window, in your garden. I'm so excited to share this journey with you. And if you're not planting, I hope you are after this video. You just gave up a granny. Or a dry skin. Nevermind. You'd pick me anyways, wouldn't you? Love you, lots of back. See you Sunday. Ciao. Rrr, rrr, rrr, rrr.