well hello everyone and welcome to another growing guide here at Larry's orchids today we're going to be covering stevia now a lot of you have recommended that we carry this so we listened to you and we did indeed begin carrying stevia stevia is one of those plants that people enjoy but it's more of a luxury because it's so expensive now when it comes to stevia plants it's a way to get around it because if you grow it yourself you then have the plant and typically how people are buying stevia is in the stevia powder which can run about sixteen to twenty dollars a pound which is very expensive for something that gets used so quickly now when it comes to stevia stevia is a natural sweetener in fact I can take one of these leaves here and sweet now when it comes to stevia a lot of people think that it's going to add sugar and they don't like to add sweeteners but stiva is actually an artificial sweetener it does not have the sucrose that you have in sugar and so it's not going to really hurt your blood sugar levels if you're a diabetic and it's also going to just add that nice Pleasant sweetness without the guilt to any of your snacks so that's also one of those things that makes it a added bonus but another thing that makes an added bonus is that it's a great house plant these things can tolerate full Sun and they can also tolerate partial Sun so just about anything over five hours of Sun is going to do great for stevia and also when it comes to fertilizing they're not very picky again we always say that we like easy here and your average all-purpose fertilizer is going to be just that a ten ten ten five five five something organic something inorganic whatever you're growing style is it's going to respond very well to it just as long as it does get some sort of fertilizer about every two to three weeks is what we like to use so then when it comes to the harvesting of stevia you want to harvest the lower larger leaves don't harvest up top here if it does start going to flower which it will you can cut back about three inches down the plant and that will stop the flowering process it will push more side shoots and it will allow you to have more of a stevia bush because the stevia flowers don't really add anything other than beauty and they're not really sweet at all so what you want this for is the leaves so the more leaves the better now the next thing is temperature this cannot be grown outside as a perennial if you live in Southern California or someplace that does not get a frost or a freeze you're going to be fine growing this outdoors but for the people that live in the north you're going to want to take it outside in the summertime it's going to really love that out on a patio or a porch just in a pot and then you can bring it back indoors in late fall winter and early spring when you have the risk of a frost and then that way you can grow stevia year-round have a natural sweetener and it's really growing in popularity so I would seriously should suggest checking this out the link in the description box below and that way you can hop on the stevia train and enjoy this natural sweetener right from your fingertips alright I will catch you all later this is luke from Larry's orchids thanking you for making us the number one stop shop for all your orchid and tropical needs take everyone