So all that my part of the Southeast is any good at growing is deer. Our tomatoes die of drought, our squash are all borered-to-death by July, you have to start the lettuce in February or it bolts, but we have the fattest, happiest deer I have ever seen. These deer will stand and look at you through the window, chewing contemplatively. In the night, if the window is open, you can hear them munching.

You know where I'm going with this - unless the plants, puny, sad things that they are, are contained by mesh on four sides and the top, the deer eat them. Even if they're not edible plants! Last year it would go like this:

Me: I plant tomatoes and hope the weather doesn't kill them!
Deer: Ooh, tasty. ::munch down to ground::
Me: D: I will put a fence around the remaining tomato! And a cage on top of the tomato! Also, tomato plants are poisonous, deer!
Tomatoes: ::grow two pathetic inches::
Deer: Ooh, tasty ::munch down to ground::

I repeated this three times with different waves of tomato plants before I gave up. This year my lettuce is the only thing I've had the heart to plant, and it lives in a full cage made of plastic mesh and bamboo stakes.