FAQ’s

WELCOME TO DRIFT FARM.

So many questions, so little time. Find answers to frequently asked questions in this FAQ blog.

What are the highlights of Drift Farm?

• Native trees, shrubs and perennials are grown for erosion control, fire prevention, wind break, to create habitat for pollinators, and for landscape beauty.

• Annual and biennial flowers are grown for bouquet designs that are sold by the owners Mark & Sheila Hlubucek on our web platform, drift-farm.com.

Is Drift Farm always open for self-guided tours?

• No, but we opened the property to tour ticket holders in the 2022 Master Gardening fundraising tour.

• We also sell tickets for a Peony Bouquet Tour in June and Dahlia Bouquet Tours in late August and September. These are small, guided events with in-depth information, bouquet design instruction, refreshments and fun.

• We create small events for private parties by appointment.

How do you irrigate?

• All plants are on drip emitters, and we have TMWA’s water service. We reduce our water usage by bringing in loads of mulch, leaves and wood chips. While residential wells are common here, it’s illegal to use well water for farm production unless you buy additional water rights, so we are happy to have TMWA as our provider.

Do you compost?

• We deadhead throughout the season, we strip leaves in the beds when harvesting, and we chop and drop the foliage and spent blooms of dormant plants. We leave attractive seed heads to overwinter and provide bird food. We pile any past prime flowers and foliage we harvested in compost piles.

How do you grow enough blooms to support a subscription business from May through October given the growing conditions at 6,000 feet?

• Perennials and bulbs bloom earlier and later than most annuals. Flowering shrubs also provide early and late season blooms and color.

• We use small scale plant extensions like hoops with row covers.

• We avoid hoop houses and greenhouses due to high wind and their negative impact on our scenic habitat.

How do you guard plants from critters?

• We have two discreetly fenced areas attached to buildings in an effort to protect plants the critters love most. They are discreet to respect the scenic corridor we live in.

• The key defense against deer in crop areas includes scents. Low, temporary fences stop most rabbits. We cage some new growth plants from quail. We use a squirrel cannon, which traps and kills them. We use snapping mouse traps.

What do you start from seeds?

• Cool season annuals and biennials, which are generally propagated in July and August for planting in September and October. Plants like Sweet William, Snapdragons, bachelor buttons, feverfew, Dara, Orlaya and Foxglove are over-wintered to ensure flowers beginning in May.

• The cool season annuals started in plug trays in February for April planting with protection include straw flowers, sweet peas, dill, scabiosa, billy balls, and a couple more successions of snapdragons.

• Warm season annuals - lots of celosias, sunflowers and zinnias - are seeded into plug trays so they form a succession of plantings that begin the second week in June.

What annual bulbs, corms and tubers do you grow?

• Soon I’ll receive ranunculus corms, which I will presprout in my cooler for several weeks before planting out with some protection to overwinter. They get over-planted with warm season annuals and generally don’t perennialize. Mostly the mice eat the corms.

• Last fall I pre-sprouted and planted anemone corms on the same schedule. They were early, strong and long. I let the bed rest, because I believe they will perennialize.

• Every fall I plant hundreds of tulips in thick mulch. These are fancy one-and-done tulips. I harvest with them with the bulbs on and store them dry in the cooler. I pull them as needed for May bouquet subscriptions and Mother’s Day bouquets.

• I plant more than a hundred dahlia tubers every spring in late May. They need to be pulled and stored in my cooler over the winter. I have overwintered them with mixed results. They generally get knocked back by our late frosts.

Which perennial bulbs, corms and tubers do you grow?

• My biggest investment has been in peonies. I have 200+ well established plants, which allows me to do a couple of weddings and Peony Bouquet Tours in June. Plus they are focal flowers in my bouquet subscriptions after the tulips are all sold. I cut them all in the bud stage and store dry in the cooler until needed.

• I have daffodils, Iris, alliums, snow drops, camassia, blue bells, acidanthera, monks hood, liatrus, eucomis, variously lilies and crocosmia in production.

What herbaceous perennials are you growing for flower production?

• Coneflowers of all varieties, rudbeckia of all varieties, globe thistle, sea holly, various salvia, various bee balm, various milk weed, various clematis, various yarrows, lupine, sedum, phlox, agastache, hellianthus, solidago, chrysanthemum, obedient plants.

How would you describe your gardening style?

• I grow most things in drifts because that’s how flowers tend to grow in natural meadow plantings.

• Permaculture informs my garden design with small native trees like service berry, chokecherry, mountain mahogany and cotoneaster weaving around native pines.

• To create focal points throughout our 2.5 acres, I’ve added stands of birch, Linder benzoin, various dogwoods, smoke bush in purple and gold, stewartia and heptacodium.

• We have about a dozen fruit trees: apple, crab apple cherry, plum, peach and pear trees, which mostly get molested by bears and deer. We also have some grape vines on fences.

• Closer to the structures, the garden transitions to flowering native shrubs like lilac, snow berry, baptisia Australis, caryopteris, hydrangea, beauty bush, mock orange, and forsythia.

• The innermost planting areas are turf, which is a final defense against fire and helps cool our house.