Lovers of sweets can make their own all-natural sugar substitutes at home.
The stevia plant, native to Paraguay and Brazil, has long been known to natives of those regions for the intense sweetness of its leaves. Today, processed extracts of the stevia plant are used as low-calorie sugar substitutes.Processed stevia has been sold as a sweetener in the U.S. since 2008 and is readily available in grocery stores. Stevia plants are also increasingly common in the U.S., making it easy to grow and make your own homemade sweetener.
Instructions
1. Locate a source for stevia plants. Because stevia is difficult to grow from seeds, gardeners generally raise purchased stevia plants. Be sure your plant is of the variety Stevia rebaudiana, the sweetest variety of stevia. Stevia rebaudiana plants have large, tender, notched leaved arranged opposite from each other around the stem and can grow to be about 65 to 80 centimeters in height. They have brittle stems, which growers generally wrap or otherwise protect during shipping.
2. Find an appropriate spot to cultivate your stevia plants. The stevia plant is native to warm, humid regions, where it grows in moist, acid soil, and it thrives best in similar conditions elsewhere. You should plant stevia in sandy, not-too-compacted soil. Do not plant stevia until the last frost has passed in your area.
3. Grow your stevia plants. Stevia plants should be exposed to 6 to 7 hours of sunshine a day and should be watered frequently: the soil in which they grow should always be moist, but not completely inundated with water.
4. Harvest your stevia. Sweetness in stevia plants reaches its peak just before the plants start to blossom, which can occur any time from mid-summer to early fall -- thus, harvesting should take place near the onset of blossoming or before the first frost, whichever comes first. To harvest your plants, clip them about 6 inches off the ground to allow the base of the plant to continue to grow. Harvesting should be done in the morning after the last dew has risen.
5. Dry the stevia. You can either dry whole plants by hanging them upside down and air-drying them, or you can strip the leaves off first and dry these on a flat screen or in a dehydrator. The stems are not as sweet as the leaves, and are to be discarded.
6. Process the stevia. Grind the dry leaves into a fine powder in a coffee or spice grinder, and store the powder in a covered jar. A tablespoon of powdered stevia has the sweetness of a cup of sugar or a teaspoon of processed stevia powder. Alternately, you can make a liquid stevia extract: bring a pot of water to a boil, remove it from the heat, then steep a tea ball filled with fresh stevia leaves in the water for half an hour. The resulting liquid can be used as a sweetener.
Tags: stevia plant, stevia plants, your stevia, plant native, plant stevia
