Easy instructions for growing stevia at home on a warm and bright window sill indoors or in pots outdoors.
How to grow stevia indoors
From all Stevia species found in the Americas, only Stevia Rebaudiana has a sweet taste. The fresh leaves do have a bitter aftertaste. This subtropical plant grows in the wild in Paraguay and Brazil and although it can live for more than a year, it’s life is usually shorter.
- Being subtropical, it demands the same climate like lets say lime trees: low temperatures need to be avoided so when you plant it outside, make sure the frost season is completely over (that’s after the 10th of may if you live nearby me).
- Put your stevia plant where it can receive long hours of light. The soil should be light acidic and preferably a combination of loam and sand, as long as it is moist without stagnant water. A lot of light encourages the growth of the leaves, lesser light induces flower growth.
- Every 4 to 6 weeks you should top your plants to force a bushy growth.
- You can take you stevia plant indoors in winter. Make sure they receive lots of light and the soil doesn’t dry out. Pots should be ideally bigger than 10 inches (25 cm).
How to start
Go to your local garden center in spring and look in the herbs section for a small plant ready to grow. If you are lucky, Home Depot sometimes does sell full grown plants in pots.
You can always buy seeds, cuttings and plants online.
Seeds
It will be hard to find seeds in your garden center as producing good seeds isn’t easy. Good seeds should be black in color. Seeds germinate ideally at 20 to 25C (68 to 77F) in a bright environment after 10 to 20 days. Most importantly: do not cover the seeds with soil as they need light to germinate!
When sowing them indoors in December in moist soil covered with plastic, you will see that only 50% of the seeds will germinate. Due to the lack of light, most of the seedlings will need support due to the lack of light. It is fair to say that starting from 10 seeds, you could end up with only one plant.
Cuttings
Rooted cuttings are the ideal way to start growing your own plants. If not available in your nearest garden center, you can by them online and they will be shipped to your doorstep.
Once you have a good Stevia plant, cuttings are the ideal way to propagate further. Cut them between 5 and 10 cm (2 and 4 inch) with at least 2 buts. Remove all leaves except for 2 or 3 and put them in late winter or early spring in perlite, vermiculite or any good soil for growing cuttings. You can also simply put them in a pot with water, just make sure to replace the water every other day.
As always with growing stevia: put the cuttings in a bright spot. May and June are the ideal months to propagate stevia from cuttings as long as you keep them moist, preferably watering them at the bottom. Once the cutting starts growing, top it so the plant can grow into a bush.
Harvesting
Since you need to remove most of the leaves from the cuttings, it’s always a good idea to combine harvesting leaves with planting new cuttings.
If you want your plant to grow further, cut away two third of a stem, remove the leaves and throw away or replant the stem.
You can use the leaves straight in your coffee or tea in stead of using sugar or just nibble on a fresh leave as a sweet treat. Heating the leaves can bring out the bitter taste, but combined with anything sour (like lime or in ice lemon tea), you should immediately be good to go.
Dry the leaves in a warm, dry area with a good air circulation.
Summarized:
Growing stevia is easy in huge pots when you give them lots of light and keep the soil moist. The difficult part is getting started, unless you can find rooted cuttings online or at your nearest garden center in early spring.
