Is Sunflower deer resistant?

The young flower heads track the sun and then settle facing east once mature, which is why a mature row all faces the same way. Sow direct, since they resent transplanting. Deer browse young plants heavily, and birds will strip the seed unless you bag the heads.

Do deer eat sunflowers?

The seedlings, mostly. NC State lists deer among the challenges Helianthus annuus resists; Rutgers' observers put sunflower in the third tier, Occasionally Severely Damaged. The likeliest reconciliation is age: a four-inch seedling is soft and at nose height, and a seven-foot plant on a stem as thick as a broom handle is neither. No source consulted here tests that, so treat it as the plain reading of the two ratings rather than a finding.

Protecting young sunflowers

The first month is the risk. A cage of chicken wire over the row until the plants are knee-high, or the 20 percent egg spray Colorado State rates High on the seedlings, reapplied in about thirty days, which is about when they no longer need it. NC State's own problem list for the plant is slugs, snails, caterpillars and beetles on the foliage, and the slug half of that is the same wire-and-early-vigilance job.

After the deer, the birds

A sunflower that reaches flowering is past the deer and into the next problem. NC State's entry is cheerful about it: "birds are attracted to seeds so leave standing dead flowers into the winter as natural bird feeders," and "the birds and squirrels will appreciate your leaving the seedheads." For seed you mean to keep, bag the heads as the paragraph above says. Blooming runs July to October, and a seedling browsed in May is usually replaceable by direct sowing again in June.