How to Grow Stevia in Your Garden

Click these links to read more of my Stevia series:
What is Stevia, Anyway?
How to Plant Stevia and Grow Your Own Natural Sugar Substitute
How to Prepare Stevia for Use in Your Kitchen

Click here for a slideshow about planting stevia.

This article is third in the series.

Ideally, when your stevia seedlings are about 6 inches tall, and still in their starting pots, prune them back so they will become bushy. When the plants are about 10 weeks old, they are a good size to transplant outdoors permanently. Stevia needs night temperatures above 40F, so transplant outdoors according to the normal seasonal temperatures for your area.

My seedlings were not ideal, and did not grow as quickly as "textbook" seedlings. When they were about 4 inches tall, the weather was warm and settled enough to set them outdoors in a covered raised bed. (See my article about making a covered raised bed here.)

Tender seedlings need to be hardened-off before you set them directly outdoors. To harden-off the seedlings, place them outdoors in their starter pots in the sun for an increasing length of time each day for several days. Begin with one-half to one hour, and increase by 30 - 60 minutes a day. Bring the seedlings back indoors when their time is up each day. Once they are acclimated to being outside in breezes and full sun for 6 or 7 hours, they can be set out where you want them to grow. Being open to the sun and wind can quickly dry out small seedling containers, so be sure to water them adequately.

Transplant the seedlings directly into the garden, or into a container. I set my leggy little plants in a raised bed that was rigged with a plastic cover to protect them from sudden dips in night time temperatures. My raised bed also had a piece of netting to shade the baby plants from too much direct sun. Stevia stems will root if they contact the soil, so you can set the seedlings a little deeper than they were growing in the starter pots to encourage them to develop better root systems.

Throughout the summer, I continued to water weekly with a fish emulsion solution, keeping the soil moist between feedings with plain water. I periodically trimmed off leaves or branches to keep the plants bushy, always saving and drying the leaf trimmings to make stevia leaf powder.

Click here for the next article in my stevia series, How to Prepare Stevia for Use in Your Kitchen

Click here for more from this author.

Sources:
Personal Experience
Growing and Using Stevia, Jeffrey Goettemoeller and Karen Lucke, 2008