Building a Minecraft Cactus Farm: Ultimate Guide for an Automatic Cactus Farm

At first glance, a cactus farm might not seem practical, but you can do a lot with it. It’s also easy to build and can be integrated into any Minecraft world. Usually, cacti can only be found in the desert in a Minecraft world. However, if you break the blocks and take them home, you can build an automatic farm! We’ll show you exactly how it works and why you might want to build such a cactus farm. It’s very useful, and not just for obtaining green dye.

Why You Need a Cactus Farm in Minecraft: Benefits and Uses

1. Cactus as a Source of Green Dye in Minecraft

If you smelt a cactus in a furnace, it becomes green dye. This is the only recipe you can create with cacti. Green dye is necessary to colour various blocks. There are surprisingly many items available in multiple colours, which you can then use as decoration.

Uses of Green Dye:

• Wool (or sheep)
• Carpets
• Beds
• Bundles
• Cyan dye
• Lime dye
• Candle
• Firework
• Glass and glass panes
• Terracotta/Ceramic
• Concrete
• Banner
• Dyeing collars (cats and dogs)

You can also trade 12 green dyes with a shepherd. This trade is available in both Java and Bedrock from the expert level onwards. The villager will give you an emerald in exchange. With a large cactus farm, this trade can be very profitable, especially with a discount. If you’re wondering how to build a trading post with villagers, we have the perfect article (How to Build a Villager Trading Post: Obtain Valuable Items through Trading) for you!

2. Minecraft XP Farms: Use Your Cactus Farm for Experience Points

A by-product of smelting is that furnaces give you experience points. We’ve talked about this in one of our articles before (Building a Minecraft XP Farm: Quickly and Easily Reach Level 30) . We also want to introduce you to a corresponding automatic cactus farm in this post, but with a slightly different design. With a cactus farm, you can gather XP without having to fight monsters. This is especially cool on Peaceful mode!

3. Breeding Minecraft Camels: Why You Need a Cactus Farm

These large animals can be found in desert villages and can be tamed. For this, you’ll need a saddle, a lead, and cactus. If you want to have many camels and breed them, then an automatic cactus farm is just right for you!

4. For Compost

You can also use the cacti in compost and then make bone meal from it. This saves you from having to fight skeletons, build a mob trap, or make a trip to the soul sand valley in the Nether.

Building an Automatic Cactus Farm in Minecraft: Step-by-Step Guide

With this cactus farm, you can accomplish all the points mentioned above. It’s best to catch the cacti with a hopper and direct them into a chest. From there, you can either take the cacti out, build a smelter, or use a composter.

Build the farm a bit away from the ground to later build a furnace underneath or at least store some chests. From the hopper, form a kind of star that extends 4 blocks in each direction. This ensures that the water flows correctly and directs the cacti into the hopper.

Build a wall around the collection basin that’s one block high. In each of the four corners, place a bucket of water. The water should flow exactly to the middle, but no further.

Next, it’s time to plant the cacti. For this, you’ll need to build a building block above the water basin in an alternating pattern. Cacti can’t grow next to each other, and we use this mechanic in our design. On the building blocks, place a sand block or another block on which the cactus can grow. Plant the cactus accordingly.

Now, you just need to go one level above and between the cacti to attach fence posts. Iron bars also work! These ensure that the cactus can grow, but the new block is immediately broken. As mentioned, the cactus can’t grow properly if there’s a block next to it. The automatically broken block lands in the water and is directed by the current into the hopper.

In the end, it’s important to build a sort of wall around the automatic cactus farm. This ensures that no cacti fall out. Use glass to see through, but any other full block is also good!

Tip: You don’t have to stop at just one level; you can build it infinitely high or wide. Just be mindful of the water currents so that they all lead to one endpoint and flow correctly. However, the pattern introduced above can be easily continued.

Building an Automatic Smelter Under a Cactus Farm: Here’s How

If you want to get experience points or green dye, you can also build an automatic smelter directly under the cactus farm. You’ll need three hoppers and three chests.

A furnace works like this:

• The block to be smelted goes in at the top. In our case, it’s the cactus.
• Fuel goes in at the back. This can be anything from coal to lava.
• The smelted blocks are output at the bottom; for this farm, it’s the green dye.

Control the output with a lever on the furnace. If you activate this, the green dye will no longer be extracted. If you then manually remove it, you’ll receive the experience from all the smelting processes! The XP is essentially stored in the furnace.

Add-on for Compost

A composter works similarly to a furnace. The cacti go in at the top, where they are processed in the compost. The finished bone meal comes out at the bottom. Use hoppers and chests here as well to automate the process.

Conclusion: Why an Automatic Cactus Farm in Minecraft is Indispensable

A cactus farm is a very simple farm that doesn’t require redstone. It uses the natural growth of the plant so that it can be harvested automatically. In the end, the cacti are collected by water currents and then processed further. Cacti can be excellently used for XP farms, for example! This is because a furnace stores the experience generated by smelting. You can also use the cacti for green dye, decoration, or feeding camels. Get a constant supply of cactus and more on your own server. Rent your Minecraft server and automate your farms for maximum efficiency!