My Stevia plants appear to be frost-tolerant!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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The Stevia plant is a South American tropical plant that has leaves that are 3-15 times sweeter than sugar, and have a very slight “licorice-ey” aftertaste to them, Stevia is non-caloric and is a novel sugar and sugar-substitute substitute, it’s a neat little plant…

Since it’s a tropical, I wasn’t expecting it to survive last night, we had air temperatures below 32 degrees, and in fact, had a dusting of snow, we lost a lot of our flowers in hanging pots, my Pimento pepper plant which had shrugged off a few 40 degree evenings took a good hit from the snow, but strangely enough, the Stevia plants not only are still green, but don’t even seem to be affected in the slightest, leaves are still soft and pliable, stems are strong, if anything, they actually look more vigorous now

Everything I’ve read so far says that Stevia is not frost-tolerant and they recommend bringing plants in to survive the winter freezes

So, I’m performing a little experiment here, I want to see how long they can withstand a New England winter, so far, they’ve weathered 40 degree evenings, as well as a mild snow flurry, but the big test is this Saturday evening to Sunday, when we might be getting a rather substantial “Nor’Easter” (if the Weather Channel is to be believed), personally, I feel since they’re hyping up this storm as the “First ÜberSnow of the season” that nothing much will actually happen, we may get a cold snap, maybe a dusting of snow, but nothing massive like the panic-mongers at TWC are predicting

I think the Stevia plants will eventually succumb to New England Winter, but it may take longer than I expect, if they do overwinter either unharmed, or with minor damage, I will be pleasantly surprised

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I’m sure Stevia won’t survive an entire winter unless you give it special protection, but I have heard of other people finding that they can push the boundaries a bit on the zone range for a plant. Sometimes gardens have ‘micro climates’ that are a little warmer than the overall climate is and plants that shouldn’t survive do. I’m in zone 5 but I’ve heard of people being able to keep zone 7 plants here by taking advantage of the protected microclimates.

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It looks like Stevia rebaudiana is routinely hardy through zone 8, dying back to the ground in winter and then resprouting in spring. I did see one report from zone 6 Kentucky that it survived a winter there, so maybe it’s not out of the question that it’d make it through winter in New England, especially in a coastal zone with good mulching. You might consider taking cuttings as a precaution, or just plan to grow it again as an annual next year if it winter-kills.