Do Deer Eat Vegetables? Every Crop by How Often It Gets Eaten

The fence page on this site records a 4-foot fence going up around a vegetable garden in 2019 and losing the broccoli, cabbage and lettuce to deer and rabbits that first season, then the 8-foot rebuild in 2021 that ended it. That is the whole subject in one garden: the vegetables people plant most are the vegetables deer eat first, and the ones deer leave alone are the ones nobody asks about.

The most useful list on the subject is Iowa State University Extension's Susceptibility of Plants to Deer Damage, which sorts fruits, vegetables and herbs into the same four tiers this site uses for ornamentals, Rarely, Seldom, Occasionally and Frequently Damaged. It is "compiled from several sources across the United States based on surveys and observations," and it opens with the caveat every list of this kind carries: "Nearly any plant (including those listed on the 'Rarely Damaged by Deer' list below) can be browsed on by deer, but some species are much more likely to be damaged than others." Where Rutgers E271, the source behind the encyclopedia, rates the same crop, both are given.

The vegetables deer rarely eat

Iowa State's top tier for fruits and vegetables is six entries long: hot and sweet peppers, onion and garlic, watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumber and eggplant. The pattern is the one the ornamental lists show. Peppers and eggplant are nightshades with leaves deer do not want; onion and garlic are alliums, the family Rutgers rates A for the ornamental kinds and the encyclopedia holds as ornamental onion; the cucurbits carry rough, bristly foliage.

A tier is a record of the plant, not the crop. Iowa State's rating for watermelon is about the vine and its leaves, and nothing consulted here measures whether a deer will eat a ripe melon off the ground. It will eat a fallen apple.

Seldom: tomatoes, rhubarb, raspberries and currants

The second tier is four entries: rhubarb, currant, "raspberry, blackberry, brambles," and tomato. Rutgers agrees on rhubarb, which it rates B. The encyclopedia holds brambles and currant at the same tier.

Do deer eat tomatoes?

Sometimes, and seldom badly. Tomato is Seldom Damaged on the Iowa State list, and the losses are usually to the soft new growth and the fruit rather than the plant, which comes back from a browse. A tomato plant stripped to the stem with clean, angled cuts on the stubs is not deer work: deer have no upper incisors and tear, leaving a ragged end, and rabbits and rodents cut cleanly. The damage page has the test. Purdue Extension describes raccoons as the animal that ravages a crop "the night before you intend to pick the corn for yourself," and raccoons and squirrels take more ripe tomatoes than deer do in most gardens, on the evidence of the bite marks.

Do deer eat pumpkins, squash and zucchini?

Squash is Occasionally Damaged on the Iowa State list, the third tier, entered as Cucurbita pepo, and pumpkin and zucchini are the same species. The vines are coarse and prickly and deer take the flowers and the young fruit more than the leaves. Whether a deer eats a ripe pumpkin is a different question from whether it eats the plant, and the extension lists answer only the second. In autumn, Minnesota Extension notes, deer "consume mast, such as acorns, as they build fat reserves for winter," and a split pumpkin in a field in October is not safe from that.

Do deer eat carrots, beets, potatoes and the root crops?

The roots are underground and the tops are what get eaten. Carrot, beet and turnip are Frequently Damaged on the Iowa State list, the bottom tier, and so are sweet potatoes, whose vines are the attraction. Radish and potato are one tier up, Occasionally. A carrot bed browsed to the ground in July does not regrow a crop; the root stops when the leaves go.

Do deer eat lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, kale and the brassicas?

Yes, first. Lettuce, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi and turnip are all Frequently Damaged, and the last five are forms of one species, Brassica oleracea, of which kale is a sixth. This is the tier that emptied the 2019 garden on the fence page. Soft, leafy, sweet and at nose height, a brassica bed is the closest thing to a food plot a vegetable garden contains, and it is planted in April, which Minnesota Extension identifies as the worst month: "Landowners often see an increase in damage in the early spring, when deer fat reserves are at their lowest."

Do deer eat corn, beans and peas?

All three are Frequently Damaged. Beans and peas go as seedlings and again as pods; corn is browsed as young plants and stripped as ears. Minnesota Extension: "In areas where crops like corn, soybeans, alfalfa or grain are grown, crops can be up to 78 percent of a deer's diet." A sweet corn patch is a crop field in miniature, and the food plots side of this site plants some of the same things on purpose.

Do deer eat asparagus and rhubarb?

Asparagus is Occasionally Damaged on the Iowa State list and Seldom Severely Damaged on Rutgers E271, and the disagreement is the ordinary width of these lists; the encyclopedia entry for asparagus carries the Rutgers rating. The spears are taken in spring where pressure is heavy, the fern rarely. Rhubarb is Seldom Damaged on both.

Do deer eat strawberries, apples and fruit trees?

Strawberry is Frequently Damaged on both lists, D on Rutgers, and the encyclopedia's strawberry entry sits in the bottom tier with hostas. Apples, cherries and plums are Frequently Damaged on the Iowa State list; Rutgers puts apple one tier up and cherry at the bottom. Pear is Occasionally Damaged. A young fruit tree faces browsing on its foliage and buck rub on its trunk in fall, and the second kills trees the first would only disfigure; the trees page covers the guards. Blueberry is not on the Iowa State list; Rutgers rates highbush blueberry C.

Do deer eat herbs?

Mostly not, and the reason is the reason lavender and catmint carry the ornamental list. Iowa State's herbs Rarely Damaged: horseradish, tarragon, lavender, horehound, lemon balm, mint, marjoram, oregano, anise, rosemary, rue, garden sage, common tansy, germander, thyme. Seldom Damaged: dill, borage, feverfew, basil, parsley, savory. Rutgers agrees down the line, A for mint, oregano, thyme, rosemary, garden sage, tarragon, horseradish, lemon balm, horehound, marjoram and rue, B for basil, dill, parsley and borage. Cilantro and chives are on neither list; chives are an allium and the family is in the top tier.

The UC Master Gardeners of Sonoma County, on the same herbs: "Many highly scented herbs familiar to gardeners become even stronger under drought conditions and even less attractive to deer." And the warning that belongs next to it: "Although deer avoid them, fast-spreading comfrey and mint should never be planted in the ground since, once established, they're nearly impossible to eradicate." A pot of mint by the door is the right amount of mint.

How to keep deer out of a vegetable garden

The vegetable garden is the one place on a property where a fence pays for itself, because the crop is concentrated, the plants are in the bottom two tiers, and the loss is the whole season. In the VerCauteren trials a 1.5 meter fence, about 5 feet, stopped none of the deer, 2.1 meters stopped 85 percent and 2.4 meters, 8 feet, all of them, which is the arithmetic behind the 2019 failure and the 2021 rebuild on the fence height page. Rabbits are the second animal in a vegetable garden and a deer fence does nothing about them; the rabbits and groundhogs page has the wire that does.

Repellents buy time on a small bed. Colorado State rates a 20 percent whole-egg spray High, reapplied at about thirty days, and Minnesota Extension's benchmark for any spray program is a 50 percent reduction in browse as very successful and 30 percent as the likelier result. On a lettuce bed that is half the lettuce. On crops you eat, use a product labeled for edible crops and wash what you pick; the recipe and the ranked table are on their own pages.

And plant the top tier where the fence does not reach. Peppers, onions, garlic, cucumbers, melons and eggplant in the open bed, the brassicas and the beans inside the wire.

What the lists cannot tell you

Iowa State's tiers were compiled from surveys and observations across the country, and the page says plainly that the results "can vary widely based on the location, the deer population, and the other food sources available." A garden backing onto woodland with no crop fields for miles is a different place from one across a road from a soybean field, and the same tomato plant is Seldom Damaged in one and eaten to the stake in the other. Minnesota Extension's last word is the honest one: "deer may browse nearly any plant during times of high nutritional stress, such as winter." The tiers say where to start. The fence says where to stop.