You plan to plant sunflowers in your lovely garden. However, the problem comes up – Do deer eat sunflowers? If yes, what should you do to protect them from this kind of animal?
Don’t worry much! We will answer your question and show you the most effective and practical ways to get deers away from your sunflower garden! Let’s read on!
Do Deer Eat Sunflowers?
The eternal question of gardenerswill be solved right now. Do deer eat sunflowers? Unfortunately, deers are attracted to sunflowers. Some people think that a sunflower fence can protect their garden. The reason is that sunflowers have fairly long stems with large leaves and flowers. Perhaps these features of sunflowers will scare deers away from your backyard.
However, this is a myth held by inexperienced caretakers. Although it possesses intimidating traits, the stems, leaves, and tops of sunflowers are especially soft and delicious to deer. Besides, they are herbivores, so it is difficult for them to miss out on delicious and nutritious food like this flower.
If you need to study deeper the specific reasons for the question – Do deer eat sunflowers, the answers are below! Let’s scroll down!
Why Do Deer Eat Sunflowers?
Another concern of horticulturists is why do deer eat sunflowers? After researching and synthesizing from many reputable sources, we will explain this question in the most understandable and scientific way.
Deer are herbivores
The first reason is because deers are herbivores. In other words, apart from sunflowers, they can eat any plant to their liking. Their diet is also much more than that of some other animals. They are always in a state of hunger and search for food to fill their empty stomachs. That’s why they are also known by another name – forager animals.
Sunflowers contain many nutrients
By perception and experience, deers see sunflowers as a plant within a wide range of natural, nutritious components such as vitamin E, thiamin, choline, biotin, or zinc. Therefore, sunflowers are one of the deer’s favorite meals.
Which Parts Of The Sunflower Will Deer Eat?
Now that you’ve understood the question – Do deer eat sunflowers? The question is – what parts of sunflowers can deers eat? And why do they eat those portions?
First of all, we must emphasize that deer enjoy most sunflower parts, including seeds, stems, flowers, leaves, and tops. Sunflower seeds are rich in fiber and carry beneficial nutrients similar to other nuts that are hard to find in nature.
The flower part provides a wide variety of nutritious values for deer in their daily diets such as choline, biotin, vitamin-E, zinc, thiamin, and especially protein.
The soft, tender tops and leaves are a valuable source of fat contents and oils that deers constantly seek. These substances will provide protein, heat, and nutrition to them during hibernation.
How To Block Deer From Your Sunflower Garden?
Below are recommendations of some effective methods to stop deers from getting to your sunflowers.
Build a fence
The first practical way gardeners apply is creating a fence high enough to prevent deers from entering their gardens. Keep in mind that your fence should be higher than 8 feet, surround your garden and closed underneath as it is very likely that deer will get in this way. You should also put some obstacles around the fence, such as tree branches, large rocks, or nets.
Use deer repellent spray.
Deer deterrent sprays such as rotten eggs, soap spray, and water pepper spray are some other options. The way to use these spindrifts is to spray the solution directly on the stems, flowers, or leaves. As a result, your sunflowers will smell bad and make deer less interested in enjoying them.
However, you also need to read the instructions carefully before using and choose the most organic solutions possible because they are applied directly to your plants.
Plant herbs with a strong smell
Deers have an extremely sensitive sense of smell. Moreover, it will smell the food before enjoying it, and they will never eat foods with unpleasant tastes.
Based on this characteristic of this species, gardeners have devised a simple but effective method to prevent deer from ruining their garden by planting herbs with odors, like mint, ginger, or sage. Alternatively, you can consider growing perennial flowers to deter deer, such as asparagus, garlic, horseradish, and chives.
At this point, your question – Do deer eat sunflowers has been completely solved.
In The Nutshell
Do deer eat sunflowers? Yes, they love eating almost all parts of this kind of plant because of nutritional values in them and other involved reasons. However, we’ve proposed practical and effective solutions, like building fences or using deer deterrent sprays, so that deers are no longer a threat to your gorgeous sunflower garden.
We hope these methods are helpful to you!
