At first glance, a cactus farm might not seem practical, but you can do a lot with it. Moreover, it is 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 this works and why you might want to build such a cactus farm. It is very useful, and not just for obtaining green dye.
Why Do I Need a Cactus Farm?
1. For Green Dye
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 necessary to color various blocks. There are surprisingly many items that are available in multiple colors. You can then use these as decorations.
Uses of Green Dye:
- Wool (or sheep)
- Carpets
- Beds
- Bundles
- Cyan dye
- Lime dye
- Candle
- Fireworks
- Glass and glass panes
- Terracotta/ceramics
- Concrete
- Banners
- Coloring collars (cats and dogs)
You can also trade 12 green dyes with a shepherd. This trade is available in both Java and Bedrock at the expert level. The villager gives you an emerald in return. With a large cactus farm, this trade can be very worthwhile, especially with a discount. If you want to create a trading post with villagers, we also have the right article (How to Build a Villager Trading Post: Get Valuable Items Through Trading) for you!
2. For Experience Points
A byproduct of smelting is that furnaces give you experience points. We’ve talked about this in one of our articles (How to Build an XP Farm: Level Up Quickly and Easily) . We will also introduce you to a corresponding 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. For Camel Breeding
These large animals can be found in desert villages and can be tamed. You need a saddle, a lead, and cactus to tame them. So, 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 compost the cacti to make bone meal. This saves you from fighting skeletons, creating a monster trap, or taking a trip to the soul sand valley in the Nether.
Building a Cactus Farm: Step-by-Step Guide
With this cactus farm, you can implement 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 retrieve the cacti, build a smelter, or use a composter.
Build the farm a bit above 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 that is one block high. Place a water bucket in each of the four corners. The water should flow exactly to the center but no further.
Next, plant the cacti. To do this, you need to build a building block above the water basin in an alternating pattern. Cacti cannot grow next to each other, and we use 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 level 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 flow.
Finally, it is 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 solid block is also good!
Tip: You don’t have to limit this farm to one level; you can build it infinitely high or wide. Just make sure the water flows correctly so that they all lead to a single endpoint. But you can easily continue the above pattern.
Adding an Automatic Smelter
If you want to obtain experience points or green dye, you can also build an automatic smelter directly under the cactus farm. You need three hoppers and three chests for this.
A furnace works like this:
- The block to be smelted goes in at the top. In our case, that’s the cactus.
- The fuel goes in at the back. This can be anything from coal to lava.
- The smelted blocks are extracted at the bottom; in this farm, that’s the green dye.
Control the output with a lever on the furnace. If you activate it, the green dye will no longer be extracted. If you then manually remove it, you will receive the experience from all the smelting processes! The XP is essentially stored in the furnace.
Adding a Composter
A composter works similarly to a furnace. The cacti go in at the top, and the compost is processed. The finished bone meal comes out at the bottom. Use hoppers and chests here as well to automate the process.
Conclusion
A cactus farm is a really simple farm that doesn’t require Redstone. It uses the natural growth of the plant so that it can break itself. In the end, the cacti are collected by water streams and then processed further. Cacti are excellent for XP farms, for instance! 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!
