I planted the marigolds from our hanging baskets in the flower boxes in front of the greenhouse. The interweb says that deer don't like to eat marigolds. What they don't tell you is the deer will yank the marigolds out of the dirt, then spit them out when they discover they don't like them. I salvaged four of them and stuck them back in the dirt, and a few weeks later they were blooming again. The deer haven't bothered them since, so maybe it just required some personal experience on their part.
On Sept. 9, my wife said I needed to take a picture of the sunflower in our back yard, which was blooming. It grew from seed that had spilled out of a bird feeder, and I put a cage around it earlier in the summer to keep the deer from eating it. After I got this image that evening, I put the cage back over it but did not anchor it. Within two days the deer had knocked over the cage and destroyed the sunflower. A potted sunflower, also grown from bird seed and sheltered inside a cage in our yard until we got the greenhouse, survived for several months inside the greenhouse and died of natural causes at a ripe old age after it produced seeds. Next year I'll get some nicer sunflower seeds and figure out a way to protect them.
Final update, Oct. 17: Something, the deer I assume, yanked the marigolds out of the planters again last night. They look devastated and there will be no more replanting this late in the year. It makes me wonder what is going to happen when I put supposedly-deer resistant plants in the outdoor boxes next year. Our deer seem to eat everything except chives and cilantro.
Bird feeder volunteer two days before its demise.
The potted sunflower prospered in the greenhouse. August 14.
In October, the dried out greenhouse sunflower with seeds.
