Minecraft now offers many exciting blocks to enhance the appearance of your constructions. It is important to achieve a natural look to perfectly integrate buildings into your world. One block added with the Caves & Cliffs Update is moss. At first glance, you might overlook moss, but this block is incredibly useful. Not only can you use it for building, but you can also spread it infinitely to create a bone meal farm. Bone meal is beneficial for many other aspects, such as growing crops. Today, you’ll learn everything you need to know about moss in Minecraft!
Finding Moss in Minecraft: The Path to Lush Caves
Moss is a relatively new block in Minecraft, available since the 1.17 update. It is an extension of naturally occurring blocks and a fantastic addition to various natural blocks in Minecraft!
Moss is not found directly on the surface but rather underground. Your best chances of finding moss are definitely in lush caves. These caves are marked by an azalea tree that protrudes above the ground. The roots of this flowering tree indicate an underground, lush cave!
There, you’ll find rows of moss blocks that you can use for your constructions. You can mine moss with a hoe. The caves themselves are also charming and idyllic! You’ll find many other great blocks there, including glow berries, spore blossoms, and masses of clay blocks. Lush caves are also home to axolotls, which swim happily through the water. As a treasure, you can sometimes find moss in old shipwrecks or in trial chambers if you don’t want to search underground for it.
Differences in Moss: The Pale Garden
However, you can also find a slightly different moss in the pale garden. We have already written a detailed article about this biome (Minecraft Pale Garden & Creak – New Biome & Dangerous Mob in Update 1.21) , if you want to learn more about it. Its functionality is similar to normal green moss, with only a colour difference. For our proposed farm, you can also use pale moss, as it doesn’t make a significant difference. Additionally, it may be worthwhile to have different types of moss on hand for constructions and to experiment.
Moss and Bone Meal in Minecraft: A Strong Connection
Moss has the property of creating many additional moss blocks from just one block. All you need is some space and bone meal. Similar to grass, you can spread moss with it, but moss replaces other natural blocks like stone, dirt, and even gravel and sand (only in Java).
Once you’ve found a moss block, you practically have an infinite amount of moss. When you spread the plant with bone meal, you also have a chance to get additional moss carpets, grass, and both the normal and flowering azalea. These can be grown into trees.
A moss block can spread approximately 3 additional blocks in any direction. The chances are always random, so you may not always cover a 7x7 field with a moss block. However, this is exactly the mechanic we will use for a moss farm.
Guide to an Automatic Moss Farm: Step by Step
Like all other natural blocks, you can process moss into bone meal using a composter. Of all the farms we’ve introduced so far (e.g., cactus farm or bamboo farm), this is also the most efficient method. However, the farm is a bit more complex, but we will go through all the steps in detail. The farm design we will use is from “VowLa” on YouTube.
Required materials:
- several stacks of building blocks
- one stack of stone
- 2 chests + 9 hoppers
- 27 redstone dust + 6 repeaters + 3 comparators + 3 redstone torches + 1 lever
- 2 dispensers + dropper + observer
- 2 composters
- 6 obsidian + 6 pistons
- 1 moss block
- bucket of water
- 2 buckets of lava
- 7 trapdoors
- 9 slabs
Step-by-Step Instructions
Bone Meal Recycling: Start with a double chest and a hopper. Stack two dispensers and a dropper above the hopper, ideally by jumping and placing them under yourself with shift-clicking. From the bottom dispenser, lead a comparator into a full block and then back in a circle with two redstone. Place a redstone torch next to the hopper at the bottom. This mechanism later detects if there is enough bone meal for the farm and directs excess items to the chest.
Redstone Clock: Build a 5x2 platform to the left of the second dispenser. Place an observer facing upwards diagonally next to the dropper. Place redstone between the second dispenser and a full block under the dropper. From this block, build a circle with a repeater on two ticks, four redstone dust, and two comparators. Finally, build a staircase with redstone, a repeater, and a redstone torch above it. This mechanism ensures that bone meal is used regularly, and new moss is created.
Composter: On the opposite side, form a long L with six hoppers leading into the bottom dispenser. Place a composter on each of the last two hoppers, and another two hoppers on top. To the left, add six building blocks and to the right, two blocks. This is where the moss will be collected and processed into bone meal later.
Basin: Now comes the upper part of the moss farm. Starting from the hoppers with the composters, build a wall around it, as shown in our image. Lay out the floor as well and leave the dropper and observer exposed. While on one side you have the two hoppers and on the other, the upper redstone torch, place six pistons and six immovable blocks (obsidian) with a gap on the opposite sides.
Stone Production: To constantly produce new moss, we also need new ground, which is created by a stone generator. First, fill the 7x7 field starting from the obsidian with stone, placing a block of moss in the centre over the dropper. On the side of the pistons, build a channel and place a bucket of water in the middle. Above it, build another channel where you place lava on the left and right. New stone is automatically produced by another redstone clock behind the pistons. For this, you need 3 repeaters on the highest tick level and a fourth on level 1. You can turn the mechanism on and off with a lever and a redstone torch on the same block.
Water Channel: Finally, you need to construct a water channel with trapdoors on the side with the protruding redstone torch from below. Lay a line of redstone on the row of blocks above. Opposite, in the channel with the hoppers and composters, place a bucket of water in each corner.
Now you can activate the farm by filling the dropper under the moss with bone meal, placing the moss again, and manually letting the moss grow once. Then activate the lever for the stone generator, and the farm should run automatically! However, it may take a while for the system to produce an excess of bone meal. It sustains itself until the lower dispenser eventually releases excess bone meal into the chest.
Conclusion: The Benefits of an Automatic Moss Farm in Minecraft
Moss is an incredibly versatile block that should not be missing from any Minecraft world! It is not only useful for decoration but also as a bone meal farm for other purposes. Rent your own Minecraft server and team up with friends to search for a lush cave where you can gather plenty of moss. Then build an automatic moss farm to have an unlimited supply of bone meal!
