Stevia From Seed

[greenthumbomaha]

My well intentioned plan to bring my purchased Stevia plant indoors did not work out (it flowered at the end of the season, may be a true annual), so I am going to try and start a few new plants from seed.
Stevia seed is iffy to germinate according to many youtubers. Its really expensive too.
Buying the seed is confusing. Different sellers name it as Sweetleaf, Candy, and just plain ole Stevia. Are they one and the same?
Burpee has a new hybrid available only as a plant.
Ant thoughts on the different varieties?

- Lisa

[KarenO]

Hi Lisa, I haven’t tried it from seed but it roots easily from cuttings. I would buy one plant and if you want more plants rooting a bunch of cuttings would be a sure thing and faster I think.
KarenO

[greenthumbomaha]

A good idea of I could find a large enough plant to take cuttings from early on. As I remember, it was a faster grower.. once settled in.
Anyway I am up for the challenge of starting from seeds too. One of the very few that I have not tried to grow from scratch.


- Lisa

[salix]

Many years ago I started a lot of Stevia plants from seed. Not knowing it was supposed to be difficult, I had no trouble at all! Transplanted them outside around the same time as the tomatoes and they grew very well. Just wanted to see what they were like, and found them to be quite a robust plant, with a slightly fuzzy leaf. Dried quite a lot of leaves, but never really did much with them. Never did anything with my sugar beets, either...

Miss those days when I had the energy to try things just for the halibut.

[Gardeneer]

I have over wintered mine for three years.

originally bought the plants from big box nursery.

Now they have got real big an bushy.

I would not recommend growing them from seed.