 Greetings friends. This is Survival Doc. Today I'm going to talk to you about my favorite herb. What's my favorite herb? Right here, stevia. Why stevia my favorite herb? Because stevia is a sugar substitute, but it's a natural sugar substitute. Sugar has many many many health problems. Most people have some idea of the dangers of eating sugar, but they don't really realize what extent sugar is the big killer. I believe the sugar is the biggest killer of Americans. It is the number one cause of cancer and of course it's the number one cause of blood sugar problems, diabetes, but it's high cholesterol, heart problems, it's inflammatory. Not much is worse than sugar. One thing that is worse is corn sweetener. It's even worse than sugar. And sugar substitutes like aspartame are no answer. They cause tumors, cancers. Most of the dangers of these sugar substitutes have been hidden from the public because they are big makers for Monsanto and the companies that make these sugar substitutes. Stevia is an herb. It is actually sweeter than sugar. You can use it anytime you want to sweeten something. I use the dried herb. I grow the herb myself in my garden. I dry them and I use it year round as a sweetener. It just adds a lot to your life without adding sugar to your life. Here's one of my Stevia pots here. This one I'm growing in a tower here. I have more Stevia over here in my garden. Here's another Stevia plant that I've got growing here in my garden. Now what you want to do when you grow Stevia is you want to cut it back. For instance right here you can see where I cut it. Let's put it on macro. You can see where I cut it. Whenever you cut it, I cut it right there. Whenever you cut it, it grows two more branches out here. And you just keep cutting it back and cutting it back and the more you cut it back the thicker it gets. So if you want an abundance of Stevia, you need to cut it back to grow it thicker. Right here a good example, a good place to cut it. You can see how you have these two little branches coming off here. What you do is you cut this main branch right here and let these two grow out. Like here you can see where I cut it here. But you want to cut it, keep cutting it and grow it thicker and thicker and thicker. Then what I do is I collect these leaves. I dry them in my food dehydrator. You can dry them in the sun. You can take the plant, hang the plant upside down, let it dry in the sun. You can actually cut this thing all the way back here and it will grow back out from the stem. Matter of fact, at the end of the garden season when it begins to freeze, I'll even take this thing out, plant it in a pot and keep it inside. Then come back out of here and plant this again. Stevia is easy to grow. It is a slow grower, but it is easy to grow. It is easy to grow. I've never had any problems with any kind of diseases with my stevia. I bought one stevia plant years ago and I've kept propagating it ever since for years. I've been propagating it, keeping it inside during the winter time, bringing it outside in the summer. Collecting leaves, drying them and having a year supply of sweetener. Stevia. Survival Doc's favorite herb. This is how I propagate my stevia plants. I just take cuttings and stick them in a little bottle of water and wait for them to root. Not all of them will root. It takes a while. They are slow. Here you can see this was beginning to root. This has been probably a couple of weeks really since I put that in water. This is ready to transplant. Right here I can transplant this into the soil or I can transplant this into a pot to grow inside. I grow them inside during the winter time and then in the summer I'll move them outside in my garden. See here's a place a couple of leaves are coming out there. It's a good place to trim it because what happens is you cut, you have one stem, you cut it, then you have two stems. And you cut each one of those, you have four stems. And that's the way you propagate or you make your plant thick. So it has lots of herb. This plant has been neglected here a little bit and it actually could be a lot bigger, busier plant if I had been keeping this up. Like I should have, but it's okay. I have been trimming some back. See right here. See I trimmed right here last time. And then this is all grown back from that. So that's the way you increase your foliage. And when you're growing herbs that's what it's all about unless you're growing it for the flowers. But sometimes you are. But usually a plant like this is certainly, you want to get all the foliage again. That's just wanting to come out. So let's just get big and bushy. And then here's the stevia that I harvested. I dried this just like this. The flowers are good. That'll add a little extra to the herb. I dehydrate my stevia in my food dehydrator. You can also just put them out in the sun to dry. I found the easiest way to do it is to just go ahead and dry them on the stem. And then once they are dry, it's easy to just pull the dried leaves from the stem and throw the stems away. Hello lamppost, whatcha knowin'? I come to watch your flowers growin'. Ain't you got no rhymes for me? Kicking along and feelin' groovy, feelin' groovy. I wish I knew all the words to that song. I used to. I need to look it up and learn them because that is such a groovy song. It just picks your spirits right up. Or mine whenever I sing it. Feelin' groovy, pa-pa-pa-pa-pa, feelin' groovy. Hello lamppost, whatcha knowin'? I come to watch your flowers growin'. Ain't you got no rhymes for me? Kicking along and feelin' groovy. Feelin' groovy, pa-pa-pa-pa-pa, feelin' groovy. Nope, that's not catnip. That is stevia. See we start this low, start it off low and gradually turn it up as it begins to dry. That's not critical for leaves, but for vegetables and fruits. If you dry something too fast, it can dry kind of a skin on it, even though it may be peeled and sliced and whatnot, but you dry it outside too fast and it kind of seals it in kind of like a skin would and makes it harder to dry it inside. Not impossible, but just harder. It may take a little longer. A little more heat. But anyway, like I said, that's not that critical for leaves. Go ahead and turn up the heat. But I like to start low and two and a half here, gradually increase it as it dries. And you always have to remember to open the lid a little bit, and you have a little crack in the back for air to escape for warm air because the heating element down here is a screen down here. It pulls air in here, the air flows through the food and out the top. Heated, the heating unit is right down here. All right, so that's what creates the circulation of the air is the rising warm air. You want to make sure you leave a vent in the back. And that allows the warm air, which carries the moisture, allows the moisture to escape. This is Survival Doc reminding you to be prepared or be prepared to be fleeced.