The Joke Is on Me

This spring I bought a stevia plant from one of those big box stores. I was rather excited to find it since I was trying to cut out all sugar. The leaves looked quite a bit like another plant in my garden, one that I would never taste the leaves but I wondered if they are in the same family. I planted it in a narrow bed beside my front sidewalk and it struggled at first.

I tasted some of the first leaves and they weren't sweet at all. After some research I found that they reach their maximum sweetness in the fall, and some say it is best to let them flower and reach their full height before harvesting seeds and leaves. So I watered it every other day, watched it grow, and then bloom.

And then, today, I noticed....


The reason it looked like that other plant in my garden is because it IS like that other plant in my garden. It's a jalapeno pepper plant!

With a stevia plant tag, of course.