Propagating a stevia plant -- possible? Desirable?

I have a stevia plant which I’ve been growing for a year or so. It did quite well, I harvested it once and got quite a few leaves from it. After cutting back the stems to harvest, it grew new stems, but it also started to flower. I’ve read that after flowering, the leaves become less sweet, and that certainly seems to be the case.

The plant is in a window box in my kitchen, and just recently I found some nasty little buggies in the soil. The leaves started blackening and crisping, from the bottom of the plant up. I poured some habanero sauce into the soil, which seems to have obliterated my multi-legged invaders, but the plant is looking a bit wilted and about half the leaves are looking damaged.

I’m wondering if it’s possible to take some slips from the plant and get them to root, and, if they do, will the new plants still have the lesser sweetness of post-flowering? Or does it start from scratch from the slip?