Growing Stevia
Update: We started our own Stevia Growing Project, please visit our Blog: Stevia Growing Experiment
On this page we want to inform you about the cultivation of stevia at your own home. So if you are a enthusiastic gardener, or even if not, you can give it a try so you don’t have to buy stevia leaves or extracts never again.
The ideal conditions for growing Stevia
Whether you can grow Stevia at home or not, is a question of the climatic conditions you are living in. As the Stevia plant is native to South America, it is the best if you live in a similar climatic zone if you have plans on cultivating the plant. If you live in Europe or North America for example you will have a hard time growing Stevia outdoors. More precisely the Stevia plant cannot endure a frosty winter, she needs warmth and light to prosper well. But it is still possible even if you do not have the ideal conditions. You just have to pot the plants which you can grow outdoors throughout the summer and put them into your house before the first frost comes. If you just want to have two or three plants, you could easily hold them in your house or your winter garden throughout the whole year. But if you want to have more of the sweetener, and don’t want to buy the Stevia extracts you will need a greenhouse to cultivate more plants. If you have enough space in your house to get all plants in through the winter, it’s OK too.
How to raise the Stevia seeds ?
If you don’t want to buy full-grown or young plants at a garden center you can easily cultivate the plants out of seeds. You can buy the seeds at the Internet or at a garden center. To grow the semen, you can fill a bowl or a pot with some soil, and press the seeds softly on the surface of it. The seeds need light to sprout, so don’t cover them with earth! Also make sure to let enough space between them, because if you want to repot the little plants it will be easier to separate them. If they are too close together their roots will knot.
After this setup you should put the pot on a windowsill so that the semen receive much light. Try to keep the soil wet, but don’t let the seeds swim in water. The best is if you use a little water sprayer, so you can dose the right amount of water perfectly. After watering you can put a glass or wrapping film over the pot with the seeds. This will help the seeds to sprout and grow, because it will keep them warm and on the other hand it will prevent vermins from damaging the sensitive plants.
After ten days you can expect the first little germs. Don’t be worried if not all seeds will sprout, that’s normal, but it also depends on the quality of the seeds. If you wait another few days, you can repot each little plant in her own pot, or in your garden.
Some further tips on growing Stevia
-If you choose growing Stevia indoors, you should use pots which are at least 6 to 7 inches high, so that the roots of the plant can develop properly. Anyway the plants will grow better when you place them in your garden. You only have to get them back in your house before the first frost.
-When watering the sweet leaf you can let wet periods alternate with dry ones, it will stimulate the growth of the roots, which will also help the whole plant to prosper.
-Once the plants are in your garden, there’s an easy method to increase the population of them. Simply take a shoot from a strong plant and put it to the ground and cover the top of the shoot with earth. After a short time new roots will develop from this spot and you can cut the old plant from the new one. Like this you can avoid the long process of growing Stevia from seed on.
Happy growing!