We finally have a set of bamboo wood in Minecraft, featuring cool new textures and even offering some exclusive blocks. But they are also the most expensive type of wood as it takes multiple pieces of bamboo to make the most basic items. Not to forget, bamboo only naturally spawns in the jungle biomes of Minecraft, making it even rarer to find and use. Lucky for you, we have the perfect solution. Our guide will teach you how to make a bamboo farm in Minecraft and collect hundreds of bamboo wood in no time.
How to Make Bamboo Farm in Minecraft (2022)
In this guide, we have covered the material list, tutorials, and the mechanics of the bamboo farm in separate sections. But before that, we are going over the general technicalities of growing bamboo.
Growth of Bamboo in Minecraft: Explained
Before we jump into creating a bamboo farm in Minecraft, you first need to understand the ideal circumstances to create this farm. If you already know how to make a sugar cane farm in Minecraft, the process will be much smoother. However, unlike sugar cane, bamboo does not require any water to grow, which gives us flexible options to shape our farm.
You can plant bamboo on grass, dirt, coarse dirt, rooted dirt, gravel, mycelium, podzol, sand, red sand, or mud blocks. On the Java edition, you can even plant it on a moss block. Though, the bamboo’s growth isn’t affected by the blocks you plant it in. Instead, bamboo requires at least level 9 light to continuously grow even during the night. It is easy to achieve this using torches or blocks like froglight in your bamboo farm in Minecraft.
Items Required to Make a Bamboo Farm
- Open Area (preferably at least 15 x 15 in any Minecraft biome)
- 1 Piece of Bamboo (at least)
- 1 Minecart with Hopper
- 33 Mud blocks (or any other compatible blocks)
- 37 Black Terracotta Blocks
- 20 Pistons
- 20 Observers
- 17 Redstone Dust
- 2 Chests
- 2 Hoppers
- 4 Redstone Torches
- 29 Rails
- 4 Powered Rails
- 17 Bamboo Trapdoors
- 24 Bamboo Mosaic Blocks (Decorative)
- 57 Dark Oak Stairs (Decorative)
- 26 Dark Oak Slabs (Decorative)
- 1 Dark Oak Trapdoor (Decorative)
- 53 Dark Oak Fences (Decorative)
- 1 Bamboo Fencegate (Decorative)
- 1 Allay (Optional)
- 4 Torches (Optional)
- 4 Stripped Blocks of Bamboo (Decorative)
Please note that you can replace building blocks like black terracotta with any other solid block. Similarly, you can freely use any other type of wood if you can’t get bamboo or dark oak wood. Unless you want the same aesthetics as us, feel free to modify the farm’s blueprint on the fly.
Make an Automatic Bamboo Farm in Minecraft
To make it easier to understand, we have divided our farm tutorial into individual sections. Explore each of them one at a time to avoid any confusion or misplaced blocks. First, follow the steps below to make a plantation area for your bamboo farm in Minecraft:
Plantation Area
1. First, use mud blocks to create a hollow square (9 x 9) by replacing the base blocks in the middle area of your farm. It should be at a 3-block distance from the boundary.
2. Then, plant pieces of bamboo on the mud blocks while leaving the corner and their adjacent blocks vacant. You can plant as much bamboo as you have early on for efficiency.
3. Then, place one solid block (black terracotta) and a piston on top behind every bamboo. The piston should be facing the bamboo, as shown in the image below.
4. After that, place an observer on top of each piston. These observers’ faces should be towards the bamboo, so you will need to place them from behind the pistons.
5. Finally, place a solid block (black terracotta) behind each piston and put Redstone dust on top of each block.
Functioning: Eventually, the bamboo will grow and show up in front of the observer, making it send a Redstone signal. The signal sent by one observer will reach all the pistons via Redstone dust leading to their activation. The pistons will then break the piece of bamboo in front of them, making it drop as an item.
Item Collection System
With the plantation and Redstone mechanics out of the way, it’s time to pick up the fallen bamboo pieces. Follow these steps to set up an item collection system for your bamboo farm in Minecraft:
1. First, choose any one side of the plantation area and then dig a trench in front of the bamboo. It should be 5 blocks wide and 3 blocks deep.
2. Then, break two blocks that are beneath each plantation block (mud block), creating a small tunnel beneath that area.
3. Now, place a large chest in the original trench and connect it with two hoppers. These hoppers should be placed after the chests, and they must be beneath the mud blocks (but with a one-block gap).
4. Then, first place a Redstone torch in the ground next to one of the hoppers. After that, place a torch in the middle of each row of the tunnel. These torches must be in the ground replacing the base block and not on top of it.
5. Then, start from one side and place solid blocks with a rail on top of them all around the tunnel. While doing so, make sure to put a powered rail on top of every solid block that’s above the Redstone torch. Also, don’t forget to put rails over the hoppers as well.
Activation of Rail & Additional Protection
Follow these steps to activate the collection system of your bamboo farm in Minecraft and make it more effective:
1. With the rail system in place, it’s time to activate it. For that, you first need to place a minecart with a hopper on top of the powered rail. This should be the powered rail that’s right next to the hoppers.
2. Then, you need to give the Minecart a slight push to get it to start moving along the rails. We suggest you place a trapdoor on the mud block that’s on top of the hopper and then use it to go into swimming mode. Then, you can easily push start the minecart.
3. Now, with everything in place, you can close off the trench while leaving a staircase-like opening to access the chests. We also added bamboo trap doors to hide the visible hoppers.
4. Finally, for the last functional step, put three bamboo trapdoors right in front of each bamboo plant. These bamboo trapdoors should be on top of each other, so you will have to hold the crouch key while placing them. Also, don’t forget to open them.
Functioning: Dropped items like bamboo can be accessed by the minecart with a hopper even with a gap of one block. So, whenever the minecart passes beneath the mud block with a dropped bamboo on it, the minecart collects that bamboo. Later, when it passes over the hoppers next to the chest, the minecart drops the collected items into them. Meanwhile, the trapdoors ensure that almost no bamboo dropped outside the plantation area.
Additional Decorations
In this guide, we are trying to make sure your bamboo farm in Minecraft isn’t only effective but also looks the best. So, follow these steps for some aesthetic upgrades.
1. First, fill the empty area next to the trapdoors with the bamboo mosaic blocks. Then, use dark oak stairs to make a roof over all the mud blocks. You can also use this time to remove the blank mud blocks from the corners.
2. Then, place more dark oak stairs to create a pyramid-like structure on top of the farm, and finally create a roof with dark oak slabs.
3. Once the roof of the main structure is covered, you can also cover the opening of the collection area and leave a one-block entrance to it. We suggest you cover this entrance with a dark oak trap door to match the rest of the farm.
4. Finally, place one striped block of bamboo in each corner of the farm area with a torch on top. The torches will ensure that your farm can work even during the nighttime. Then, connect the striped bamboo blocks with dark oak fences. But don’t forget to add a bamboo fence gate to enter your bamboo farm in Minecraft.
Additional Bamboo Farm Security with Allay
The problematic part about using pistons on a farm is that they, at times, make the crop glitch out of the barrier. This basic error can make you lose a dozen of bamboo pieces during a few cycles of the bamboo farm in Minecraft. Fortunately, you can solve this issue by getting an Allay to guard the bamboo farm. Here’s how.
1. First, find an Allay in Minecraft and bring it to your bamboo farm. Then, hand it a piece of bamboo so that it automatically finds and collects copies of the same.
2. Then, put two observers facing each other next to a jukebox to make it play indefinitely. The Allay will then automatically be connected to that jukebox.
3. Finally, place a hopper next to the jukebox. Whenever an Allay picks up a stray piece of bamboo, it will throw the bamboo on your jukebox, which will then be collected in the hopper. You can also attach a chest to that hopper for safekeeping.
How to Use Bamboo Farm in Minecraft
Once your bamboo farm is active, you must wait for the bamboo plants to grow and get harvested. All the gathered pieces of bamboo will automatically be collected in the dedicated chests. Once you have enough bamboo, you can use them for the following purposes:
- Bamboo Wood: You can use the collected pieces of bamboo to create a variety of bamboo wood items.
- Fuel: Being a type of wood, bamboo can be used as fuel in furnaces and blast furnaces.
- Panda: Pandas love eating bamboo in the real world as well as in Minecraft. So, you can use pieces of bamboo to feed and breed the panda mobs.
- Crafting: You can also craft scaffolding and sticks using pieces of bamboo.
- Flower Pots: If you place the piece of bamboo in a flower pot, it looks like its dropped form and acts like a decorative item.
Make and Use Bamboo Farm in Minecraft
Just like that, you have solved your bamboo scarcity problem once and forever. But it isn’t the only type of wood you can grow and farm in Minecraft. You can use our dedicated guide to learn how to make a tree farm in Minecraft to get all wood types in plenty. Though, it isn’t as easy as building a bamboo farm. We suggest you go through the basics of Redstone components to learn the basics and avoid any problems in the future. Having said that, how are you going to integrate and use the bamboo farm in your Minecraft world? Tell us in the comments below!
