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

At first glance, a cactus farm may not seem practical, but you can do a lot with it. Plus, it’s easy to build and can be integrated into any Minecraft world. Normally, 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 turns into green dye. This is also the only recipe you can make with cacti. Green dye is essential for coloring various blocks. There are surprisingly many items available in several colors. You can then use these for decoration.

Uses of Green Dye:

• Wool (or sheep)
• Carpets
• Beds
• Bundles
• Cyan Dye
• Lime Dye
• Candles
• Fireworks
• Glass and Glass Panes
• Terracotta/Ceramic
• Concrete
• Banners
• Dyeing collars (cats and dogs)

You can also trade 12 green dyes with a shepherd. This trade is available in both Java and Bedrock versions at the expert level. The villager will give you an emerald in exchange. With a large cactus farm, this trade can be very profitable, especially with a discount. We’ve also got the right article (How to Build a Villager Trading Post: Acquire Valuable Items Through Trading) for you on how to build a trading post with villagers!

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

A byproduct of smelting is that furnaces give you experience points. We’ve discussed this in one of our articles (Building a Minecraft XP Farm: Quickly and Easily Reach Level 30) . We also want to introduce you to a suitable automatic cactus farm in this post, but with a slightly different design. With a cactus farm, you can collect XP without having to fight monsters. This is especially cool in 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 that, you need a saddle, a lead, and cactus. So, if you want to have many camels and breed them, an automatic cactus farm is exactly what you need!

4. For Composting

Of course, you can also compost the cacti and turn them into bone meal. This saves you the trouble of fighting skeletons, building a monster trap, or taking 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 implement all the points mentioned above. The best way is to catch the cacti with a hopper and direct them into a chest. There, you can either remove the cacti, build a smelter, or use a composter.

Build the farm a bit off 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 properly and directs the cacti into the hopper.

Build a wall around the catch basin, one block high. Then place a water bucket in each of the four corners. The water should flow exactly to the middle, but no further.

Next, it’s time to plant the cacti. You need to build a building block above the water basin in an alternating pattern. Cacti cannot grow next to each other, so we make use of this mechanic in the design. On the respective building blocks, place a sand block or another block on which the cactus can grow. The cactus is then planted on it.

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

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

Tip: You don’t have to limit this farm to just one level; you can build it infinitely high or wide. Just make sure the water currents lead to a single endpoint and flow correctly. But you can simply continue the pattern presented above.

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

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

A furnace works like this:

• The block to be smelted goes in the top. In our case, that’s the cactus.
• The fuel goes in the back. This can be anything from coal to lava.
• The smelted blocks are extracted from the bottom. In this farm, that’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 manually remove it, you’ll receive the experience from all the smelting processes! The XP is essentially stored in the furnace.

Composting Add-on

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

Conclusion: Why an Automatic Cactus Farm in Minecraft is Indispensable

A cactus farm is a really simple farm that doesn’t require Redstone. It uses the natural growth of the plant to self-harvest. In the end, the cacti are collected by water currents and then further processed. Cacti can be excellently used for XP farms! Because a furnace stores the experience gained from smelting. You can also use the cacti for green dye, as decoration, or to feed camels. Get a constant supply of cactus and more on your own server. Rent your Minecraft server and automate your farms for maximum efficiency!