Planting Stevia in Containers, Part II – Container Gardening with Herbs

This video is part of a series of easy to understand and comprehensive videos on Planting Herbs in Containers narrated by Barb Melera, co-founder of Harvesting History Heirlooms, LLC. This particular video describes how to grow in containers and when to harvest one of the sweetest herbs on earth. It also details the history and original habitat of this plant. Excellent for novice and experienced gardeners.

Brought to you by Harvesting History, LLC an American Heirloom Horticultural Company, https://harvesting-history.com/. You can purchase the bulbs discussed in this video at our website, https://harvesting-history.com/

okay we’ve gone through the history of this plant we’ve shown you uh what kind of pots it should be grown in we’ve shown you how to grow the stevia now let’s show you how to harvest the stevia for most people uh for everybody they harvest the stevia by taking a leaf and what’s really fun especially fun for children is to take the leaf and just stick it in your mouth you got to chew it up really really chew it up and then just about now it starts to ooze its sweetness this is much much much stronger than sugar it’s very very sweet and then you can um swallow the leaf the other thing that people do is they brew a tea and then they take these leaves and they put them in the bottom sometimes it’s nice to mash them up a little bit they put them in the bottom of the cup then they pour the very hot tea water on top and the stevia leaves sweeten the tea in a beautiful way so you can do those two things with the fresh leaves you can also make the Stevia powder you see it in the stores it’s under the name Truvia and the way that you get powdered Stevia is you let the leaves dry on a screen or something like a screen where there’s air availability from the bottom and from the top this is an old screen that went into oldfashioned windows that Tu screens like this even comes with its own set of uh spiderwebs then you take these leaves and you have to put them someplace where the wind isn’t going to blow them and they really don’t need to be in any kind of sun um light is fine but sun is not so good for these leaves we’re now in the back end of our garage and we’re going to take these leaves on the screen and place them on this rack and depending upon the weather whether it’s humid or dry it should take about 4 weeks maybe longer maybe less and the leaves will turn completely white you have to be careful when you remove them because they come apart into tiny tiny flakes very easily so think about that when you go to finally place the leaves and I would put them in a screw top glass jar and they’ll keep for months if not a whole year so this is how you harvest your Stevia leaves in order to make the powder the fresh leaves are good for brewing tea and the fresh leaves are good for just chewing off the plant the fresh leaves also make a delight condiment for a fruit salad I hope you’ve enjoyed learning a little bit about Stevia and how to grow it how to harvest it one last word you can bring the stevia plant in in the fall before a frost hits it and grow it as a house plant through out the winter months it needs a good sunny window and you should be very aggressive about trimming it so that it doesn’t get leggy you cannot trim it enough so that it would hurt the plant and you can trim down to say here on these these plants so if you want to have Stevia all year long you can do that the one caution that you have to understand is you cannot let the stevia dry out in your home because the plant will be dead if it dries out Stevia is a really neat plant it’s a really neat plant to introduced to children and um and it’s a it’s a great food supplement food enhancer remember Stevia is much much stronger than sugar it has no carbohydrates and it has no sugar so it’s great for a number of people with various health challenges again hope you’ve enjoyed harvesting histor series on the stevia plant if you have enjoyed this video please come to our website www.h harvesting DH his.com where you can purchase heirloom non GMO vegetables flowers and herbs please like subscribe and share with your friends our channel on the left side of your screen there is our most recent video and on the right side of your screen is one of our playlists we are harvesting history seeding the future