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Tips, Tricks, and general information about Farming in mincraft

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Gryphon2020
Level 22 : Expert Skinner
6
So here, you will learn stuff about farming in minecraft!!
This will cover:
Wheat, Pumpkin, Melon, Reeds, Cactus, Trees, Animals, Cocoa beans and even Netherwart!!
I'll also include screen shots of some effective ways to set up your farms!!

WHEAT
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To plant wheat, you first need seeds. These are gathered by:
A- breaking tall grass will occasionally drop seeds
B- breaking crops will drop seeds (immature will drop 1, fully grown have the chance to drop 0-3 seeds)
C- finding them in dungeon chests
D- Trade with a villager

Once you have your seeds, you need soil. This is created by right clicking dirt or grass with a hoe.
Soil will disappear on it's own, if there is no water within four blocks of it.

Then right click the soil with a seed, and you have planted your crop!! It will then take 5-35 minutes to grow to full height, going through multiple stages. You can tell that the wheat it fully grown when it becomes brown, and it one block tall. Once the wheat has finished growing, hit it once to destroy it, then you can pick up the 0-3 seeds, and one wheat.

Soil will not disappear if not within range of water if there is a seed on it. Still, if the soil is not hydrated (has become noticeably darker) the crop will grow much, much more slowly. You can hydrate soil by having water within four blocks of it. Also, wheat will not grow if there is a block above it, except if that block is transparent, like glass.

A quick and easy way to harvest wheat is to run water down your field, which destroys all the seeds/wheat on the soil, but leaves the soil itself intact.
A large scale operation:
mqdefaultjpg
Here, the water runs down the terraces, and ends up at the bottom, where it is easy to pick up the fallen seeds and wheat.

There are so many versions of farming wheat, that it really depends on what you want. The one style that has the largest wheat:water ratio is a 9 x 9 square, with water in the middle and wheat all around it.

Wheat can be used to make bread, cookies, cake, and breed some animals.

Picture of the growth of wheat (the last stage is fully grown):
Wheat_Growth_Stagespng

PUMPKIN/MELON
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Pumpkins and melons are practically the same, so they are put in the same section.
There are, again, multiple ways to get their seeds:
A- place the object in a crafting square (normal pumpkin, and melon slice)
B- Find it in a dungeon chest
C- Trade with a villager

Sadly, melons do not grow in the wild, so the only way to get your first seed is to find it in a dungeon chest or purchase it from a villager. Pumpkins, however, grow naturally, and generally in mountain biomes.

You plant the seeds on soil, like wheat, but they grow differently. Once fully grow, a pumpkin/melon stalk will produce a pumpkin/melon on an adjacent block (not diagonally). They will also not grow if there is a block above them, except if it is transparent.

To collect the pumpkin/melon, you can destroy it normally, which takes a little bit of time. Do not destroy the stalks, as they will continue to grow more and more pumpkins/melons as long as there is space. Each stalk can only grow one plant at a time though. Destroying melons provides you with

These are two effective ways of planting you pumpkin/melon farm. Both are equally effective:
Image px-MelonFarmpng

Pumpkins can be used to make lack-o-lanterns, pumpkin pie, and snow/iron golems
Melon slices are used to make glistering melons, and also can be crafted into melon blocks.

Growth of a pumpkin/melon stalk:
FileMelonstemgrowthpng

REEDS
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Reeds, also known as sugar cane, can be found in many places.

It most commonly occurs in desert biomes, but can be seen in all others, but is rare in tundra.

Reeds only adjacent to water, but not at a diagonal. They can be planted on dirt, grass, or sand. If the water freezes, it does not count as a water source any more, and the reeds will break. If in a snow biome, have sufficient lighting to keep the ice away or go underground. They do NOT grow faster on any partucular material.

They grow one on top of another, so if there is one reed on the ground, it can grow up to two more on top of it. When collecting, you should break the middle reed, which also destroys the top one, but leaves the bottom to re-grow more.


Reeds can be used to make paper (books) and sugar (cake)

This is the most effective style of reed farm, with 75% reeds, but is slightly complicated:
File-- png

This is a more simple, and still pretty effective version:
Thumbnail for version as of   September
(The stone slabs are covering water)

CACTUS
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Cactus is a very similar plant to reeds, but has it's differences. One major thing is that they grow in the same manner, one block on top of another.
They can be found literally everywhere in a desert biome, which makes them easy to find.

Cacti grow on sand only, and do not need water to survive. They cannot have any adjacent blocks to them, otherwise they will break. This means that cactus farms are either extremely inefficient or impossible to move through. Another important feature of the cactus is that they hurt you when touched, and if an item drops on it, it will be destroyed. All this makes cacti very difficult to farm.

The best way to collect cacti is to destroy the bottom block, dropping the rest. This is because if you broke the middle block like with reeds, the bottom one would destroy the top two.

Cacti can be used in green dye.

There are two slightly effective ways to farm cacti.
One, the way to grow as many as possible in the space provided:
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(there does not have to be the gap in the middle)

The second is easier to move through, but produces less:
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This style can also be used to make an automated cactus farm. If you place a block next to where the second cactus block will grow, it will make the cactus drop and fall to the ground, saving you the trouble of farming the cacti yourself.

THE REST WILL BE ADDED LATER!
plz diamond if you like this/find it useful!!
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madlevi22
10/27/2012 9:18 pm
Level 9 : Apprentice Blacksmith
Good job so far :D
1
Gryphon2020
10/28/2012 7:16 am
Level 22 : Expert Skinner
thx!
I'm going to finish soon, I'm just a little bit busy....
1
coolminecaleb12345
10/27/2012 10:04 am
Level 5 : Apprentice Miner
DIAMONDS FOR YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1

Welcome