I have found that if you don't remove the flowers, the plant is more likely to die right back to the ground in winter. And in fact, I've had plants die altogether after flowering. So I religiously remove the flowers.

It doesn't hurt to give the plant a thorough haircut in the process!

Thanks for the info, Daisy.

I have several stevia plants. When they started floweing,
I cut them back and made my major harves. I only left one of them to go on with flowering, so that I can collect seeds. Right not that plant is full of flowers. Honey and bumble bees like them a lot, so do some white butterflies.

The ones that I cut back, are growing new branches. I figure by the time it cools off (early november, maybe) I will have my final harvest.

I have already dehydrated my first harvest. I also kept the stems and have ground them separately from the leaves.
I mix it with ground coffee. They are also sweet though not as sweet as the leaves.
cyrus

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I'll make sure to do that then. There's a lot of buds to cut off!

I read that seed isn't preferable to growing stevia, that you get the sweetest plants from asexual propagation.

That isn't necessarily true. The sweetness of the leaves varies considerably according to many factors - the soil, the climate, the time of year and many more, including how young/old the leaves are.

The reason most people propagate stevia vegetatively (cuttings etc) is that only a very small percentage (as low as 1%)of the seeds are viable, and they need to be very fresh to germinate.

I read that if you don’t nip off the flower buds, the leaves can become bitter