Minecraft now offers many exciting blocks that you can use to beautify your structures. It’s important to integrate your buildings into the world naturally. One block that was added with the Caves & Cliffs Update is moss. At first glance, you might not give moss much attention, but it’s immensely useful. You can not only build with it but also spread it infinitely to create a bone meal farm. Bone meal is useful 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’s an extension of naturally occurring blocks and a wonderful addition to various natural blocks in Minecraft!
Moss isn’t found directly on the surface but rather underground. Your best chance of finding moss is definitely in lush caves. These are marked by an azalea tree protruding from 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 builds. You can mine moss with a hoe. The caves themselves are scenic and idyllic! You’ll find many other great blocks there, including glow berries, spore blossoms, and plenty of clay blocks. Lush caves are also home to axolotls, which swim happily through the water. You can sometimes find moss in old shipwrecks or treasure chambers if you don’t want to search underground.
Differences in Moss: The Pale Garden
You can also find a slightly different type of moss in the pale garden. We’ve 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 regular green moss, but it differs in color. You can use pale moss for our farm as well; in the end, it doesn’t make a significant difference. Additionally, it can be worthwhile to have different types of moss on hand for building and experimenting.
Moss and Bone Meal in Minecraft: A Strong Connection
Moss has the property of creating many more moss blocks from just one block. All you need for this is some space and bone meal. Similar to grass, you can spread moss with bone meal, but moss replaces other natural blocks like stone, dirt, and even gravel and sand (Java only).
Once you find a moss block, you practically have an infinite amount of moss. When you spread the plant with bone meal, you have a chance of getting additional moss carpets, grass, and both regular and flowering azalea. You can grow these into trees.
A moss block can spread to about three additional blocks in each direction. The chances are always random, so you won’t always cover a 7x7 field with a moss block. However, this is the mechanic we’ll use for a moss farm.
Step-by-Step Guide to an Automatic Moss Farm
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 the most efficient method. However, the farm is a bit more complex, but we’ll go through all the steps in detail. The farm design we’ll use is by “VowLa” on YouTube.
Required Materials:
- Multiple 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 + 1 dropper + 1 observer
- 2 composters
- 6 obsidian + 6 pistons
- 1 moss block
- Water bucket
- 2 lava buckets
- 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 you with shift-click. From the bottom dispenser, lead a comparator into a solid block and then back in a loop with two redstones. Place a redstone torch next to the hopper. This mechanism will later detect if there is enough bone meal for the farm and direct excess items into the chest.
Redstone Clock: Build a 5x2 platform next to the second dispenser. Place an observer facing upwards diagonally next to the dropper. Place redstone between the second dispenser and a solid block under the dropper. From this block, build a loop with a repeater set to two ticks, four redstone dust, and two comparators. Lastly, build a staircase with a redstone, a repeater, and a redstone torch above it. This mechanism ensures that bone meal is regularly used and new moss is generated.
Composter: On the opposite side, form a long L shape with six hoppers leading to the bottom dispenser. Place a composter on each of the last two hoppers, and two more hoppers above them. To the left, add six and to the right two building blocks. This will later collect moss and process it into bone meal.
Basin: Now comes the upper part of the moss farm. Starting from the hoppers with the composters, build a wall around, as shown in our image. Lay out the floor and leave the dropper and observer open. While there are two hoppers on one side and the upper redstone torch on the other, place six pistons and six immovable blocks (obsidian) with a gap on the opposite sides.
Stone Generation: To continuously produce new moss, we also need a new ground created by a stone generator. First, fill the 7x7 field starting from the obsidian with stone, and place a moss block in the center above the dropper. On the side of the pistons, build a channel, placing a water bucket in the middle. Above this, create 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 setting and a fourth on setting 1. You can turn the mechanism on and off with a lever and a redstone torch on the same block.
Water Ditch: Finally, from the side with the protruding redstone torch, construct a water ditch with trapdoors from below. Lay a line of redstone on the row of blocks above it. Opposite, in the ditch with hoppers and composters, place a water bucket in each corner.
You can now activate the trap by filling the dropper under the moss with bone meal, placing the moss back, and then manually letting the moss grow once. Activate the lever for the stone generator, and the farm should run by itself! However, it may take a while for the system to produce an excess of bone meal. It is completely self-sustaining until the bottom dispenser eventually passes excess bone meal to the chest.
Conclusion: The Benefits of an Automatic Moss Farm in Minecraft
Moss is an incredibly versatile block that shouldn’t be missing in any Minecraft world! It’s valuable not only for decoration but also as a bone meal farm for other purposes. Rent your own Minecraft server and embark on a journey with your friends to find a lush cave where you can gather enough moss. Then build an automatic moss farm to have an infinite supply of bone meal on hand!
