Growing stevia yourself requires just a little bit of effort on your part. You can grow your own stevia plant and harvest it yearly for yourself or your family. Since a little bit of it goes a long way, you don’t need much to supply your sweetener needs for a whole year.
I found organic seeds for growing your own stevia plant at Whole Foods market, and after I had already bought those, I accidentally discovered that they sold the whole plant as well. Growing stevia plants overwinter very well indoors and mine came back again from the root the next spring.
This year (2009), one branch of my growing stevia plant decided it liked my tomato plants and reached over to their pot. It then proceeded to plant itself into the soil there, so now I have two growing stevia plants instead of one. I just transplanted it into something smaller and brought them both inside the house to wait for warm weather again.
When growing stevia yourself, you should harvest the leaves before the plants start to flower, which in Georgia would be the last of August or the first part of September. If you start to see flowers (like this one in the picture), pinch them off and then harvest the leaves as soon as possible. By harvesting, I mean just pull the leaves off of the stevia plant and wash them if they have dirt on them. Then set them out to dry on a piece of paper towel until no longer moist. After that, you can just put them in an open flat dish and let them dry until crumbly.
Once completely dry, you can run them through a coffee grinder (clean, of course) until finely chopped, and then store them in an airtight container. You will need to experiment to see how much to use, as sweetness can vary. If you wait until many flowers have formed, it will start to have a bitter aftertaste, so harvest them before that time. (I found this out the hard way.)
You can also put the leaves crushed into a fine mesh strainer such as one meant for making tea by using whole leaves instead of tea bags. Then just pour the hot water over them into your drink of choice and it will sweeten it perfectly.
Types of Stevia
Stevia comes in many forms, from powder to extract to whole leaves to liquid. I prefer the stevia extract from NOW brand and know how much to use because I am familiar with it. Remember, you can always add more, but you can’t take it out if you’ve put too much in. Extract, as opposed to powder, does not have the aftertaste that some people find to be objectionable.
Stevia is 200-300 times sweeter than sugar so a little bit goes a very long way. This brand includes a very small spoon to use as a serving so you can see by the size of the regular teaspoon beside it how really small it is.
Some people think that stevia has a bitter aftertaste so try different brands to see what works best if you try one and don’t like it. It does have a slightly anise or licorice flavor to it naturally, some brands more so than others.
Brands of Stevia
NOW brand has a wonderful Vanilla flavor stevia in packets. Since so little is needed, to have a packet that looks familiar to most people, there has to be a lot of filler added to it. I’m a little leery of this and I found that I liked this particular variety of stevia a bit too much.
It says that it has “natural flavorings” in it and that it does contain milk so it might have dried milk added to it. Please see the link to “Benefits of Raw Milk” to read about the dangers involved in that.
I called the company to find out exactly what was in it and was told that it was proprietary information and that they couldn’t give it out because their competitors might copy it. I was told that I could ask for specific things and they could tell me if it was in the product or not.
I did ask if it had MSG in it and they said “No”, but I didn’t ask if it had MSG under any of the other names it goes by. Something in it made me almost addicted to it and I consumed way too much of it. I considered that to be a clue and gave up the packets, although I do still use NOW brand stevia extract and like the taste of it very much.
Luo Han Guo sweetener
I had to learn to switch back and forth between stevia and Luo Han Guo as sweeteners because I developed a slight sensitivity to the stevia. I wonder now if it wasn’t some other ingredient in the French Vanilla that was causing the problem.
My theory is, the simpler and more natural the product is, the better I like it. There is less likelihood of having any adverse side effects if it is just one made-by-nature substance.
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