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

At first glance, a cactus farm may not seem practical, but there are plenty of things you can do with it. Moreover, it is 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 this works and why you might want to build such a cactus farm. It is very useful, and not just for getting 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 make with cacti. Green dye is necessary to color various blocks. Surprisingly, there are many items available in multiple colors. You can use these for decoration.

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 will give you an emerald in exchange. With a large cactus farm, this trade can be very worthwhile, especially with a discount. If you’re interested in building a trading post with villagers, we also have the appropriate article (How to Build a Villager Trading Post: Get Valuable Items Through Trading) for you!

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

A byproduct of smelting is that furnaces give you experience points. We have 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 collect XP without having to fight monsters. This is especially cool in Peaceful mode!

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

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

4. For Compost

Of course, you can also compost the cacti and turn them into bone meal. This saves you the trouble of fighting skeletons, building a mob 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 above-mentioned points. It’s best to collect the cacti with a hopper and direct them into a chest. There you can either take the cacti out, 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, you 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, one block high. In each of the four corners, place a water bucket. The water should flow exactly to the middle, but no further.

Next, it’s time to plant the cacti. To do this, you must build a building block above the water basin in an alternating pattern. Cacti cannot grow next to each other, and we take advantage of this mechanism in the design. On each building block, place a sand block or another block on which the cactus can grow. The cactus is then planted on top.

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

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

Tip: You don’t have to limit this farm to just one level; you can build it infinitely high or wide. Just pay attention to the water currents so that they all lead to one endpoint and flow correctly. But you can simply continue the above-mentioned pattern.

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

If you want to obtain experience points or green dye, you can also directly build an automatic smelter 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, it’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, it’s the green dye.

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

Extension for Compost

A composter works similarly to a furnace. The cacti go in at the top, where they are processed in the composter. The finished bone meal comes out at 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 harvest itself. In the end, the cacti are gathered by water currents and then further processed. Cacti, for example, are excellent for XP farms! 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!