Stevia: You Don't Have to Pay 5 Bucks For 50 Packets

The answer is, yes. You can grow Stevia natively and it's well worth it due to it's general uses for sweetening and as leaf that can brew it's own unique sweet tea. As a weak perennial, this plant requires re-planting every 2 years, however, it takes up far less room than Sorghum, and is more feasible than Sugar Cane. While Stevia is native to the tropics, if you apply the same techniques as a zucchini or cucumber vine, such as making a raised mound before planting, you can water frequently, which the plant requires, but avoid rotting of the roots.

From Stevia.Com:

While tolerant of most soil types, Stevia prefers a sandy loam or loam. Any well-drained soil that produces a good crop of vegetables should work fine. Incorporating organic matter is the best way to improve heavy, high clay soils. A rich compost made with leaves, grass, hay, kitchen waste, manure, and other organic residues will improve soil structure and supply nutrients. Finished compost may be tilled, disked, or spaded into the soil before planting or used as a mulch later on. A "green manure" crop the previous year such as oats, rye, or legumes will also improve heavy soils. Stevia occurs naturally on soils of pH 4 to 5, but thrives with soil pH as high as 7.5. However, Stevia does not tolerate saline soils (Shock, 1982).

While a good compost usually satisfies nutrient requirements, soil testing or plant symptoms may alert you to deficiencies. Mark Langan of Mulberry Creek HerbFarm recommends low nitrogen or organic fertilizers. Excess nitrogen promotes rank growth with poor flavor. Bone meal, blood meal, cottonseed meal, guano, or dried manure provide nitrogen that is released slowly. Rock phosphate or bone meal provide phosphorous. Greensand is a good source of potassium. Rock phosphate, bone meal, and greensand offer a wide range of trace minerals. For maximum nutrient availability, work organic fertilizers into the soil a few months before planting, or mix with compost. For poor fertility soils, Blas Oddone (1997) of Guarani Botanicals, Inc. recommends incorporating 6 to 7 pounds of cattle manure per square yard. When using chemical fertilizers, a low nitrogen formula such as 6-24-24 is recommended in a split application - at planting time and again in mid summer. (Columbus, 1997). Steve Marsden of Herbal Advantage, Inc. simply uses a balanced vegetable fertilizer at the dose and intervals recommended on the container for vegetables.

Another time we will get into using Stevia as a sweetener in it's raw state.