The sowing time of Stevia is from April to June. Generally, it can be sown in greenhouse from March to April, autumn in warm area and in September. According to the actual situation, we can choose the right sowing time, but if we choose autumn sowing, we need to consider the winter problem of straw chrysanthemum.
Choose the fertile, loose and well drained soil as the bed, and the soil is best mixed with organic matter compost.
When the fruit is ripe, the flower head with deep color shall be selected as much as possible, and hand picking shall be carried out in the morning to avoid seeds scattering. The seeds should be dried in a cool place, put into a gauze bag, and stored in a low temperature and dry place.
It takes about 3 months from sowing to flowering. In order to facilitate management, it is better to use seedling tray to sow seeds. Install bed soil on seedling tray, slightly compact, scrape and apply a certain amount of base fertilizer and water, and sow seeds.
Keep proper temperature during sowing, and seedlings will appear in a week. When there are 7-8 true leaves, the water and fertilizer should be controlled. It can be picked many times before flowering.
Before sowing, the seeds should be stored in a cool and dry place.
It should be noted that the thickness of covering soil on the seed surface is 2-3 times of the seed diameter. If it is autumn sowing, it may be necessary to overwinter in hotbed to ensure that the growth temperature of Stevia is suitable.
The optimum temperature for germination is about 20 ℃, and the optimum temperature for seedling growth is between 5-25 ℃. It is warm and frost resistant, and hot is not allowed. Like enough sunlight, the seedlings grow slowly under insufficient sunlight.
