5 Best Uses of the Composter in Minecraft

If you have stumbled upon a strange wooden block called the composter and are wondering what it does in Minecraft, you’re at the right place. We have covered the five best uses of the composter, so you learn how useful it is in Minecraft.

We’ve also covered how to make a composter in Minecraft in a separate guide, so do check it out if you haven’t acquired this block yet.

1. Make Bone Meal

As you might’ve guessed, the composter is used for composting. What that means is that it’ll turn plant-like items and blocks into bone meal. This is the most important out of all composter uses in Minecraft, as bone meal is an extremely useful item.

With bone meal selected, you can right-click on some natural blocks, such as moss, crops, saplings, flowers, and others, to cause them to grow or spread. It’s a crucial ingredient in many farms, like a tree farm. So, you’ll need a lot of bone meal, and that’s where the composters come into play.

Composter has multiple levels displayed by the layers inside. When there are 7 layers (maximum) inside the composter, the podzol-like appearance changes signifying you can collect the bone meal, simply by right-clicking the composter.

After that, the level will automatically reset. To increase the level of composting, you need to have the plant-like items selected with which you can right-click on the composter. This will use up the item and sometimes (or all the time) increase the layer inside the composter.

Whether the level is going to rise or not depends on the item used. So, some items are very likely to add the compost level, while others are not. You can view the table below to see exactly what items have high or low chances of increasing the composter layer.

Composting Items Table

2. Farmer Villager Workstation

The composter is frequently used as a farmer Minecraft villager workstation block. Having this block around will convert any unemployed villager into a farmer. If you want to know how to trade with villagers and what trades farmers have, check out our linked guide.

Furthermore, if they offer you trades you don’t like, you can always reset them by breaking the composter and placing it back down. Once you’re happy with the trades, you can trade with the farmer and lock the options in.

3. Bone Meal Farm (w/ Hoppers)

In order to make bone meal production with composters a little bit easier in Minecraft, we should automate it. Hoppers can only pull items out of non-full blocks and lucky for us, composters are not full blocks. This means we can place the hopper underneath the composter and it’ll drain bone meal from it. But, that’s not all.

We can also place a hopper above the composter to put items in it. Then, you can hook up chests with hoppers, and you’ll have a simple bone meal farm. Just remember to regularly fill the system with items. Hoppers, however, don’t interact with the composter’s sides.

4. Redstone Component

Believe it or not, the composter is a great redstone component block. Placing a redstone comparator to read its signal output, you can transmit redstone power. The strength of the signal will depend on the layers inside the composter.

For example, if the composter is empty, the signal will be 0, or if there is one layer, the signal will be 1, 2 layers will give a signal strength of 2, and so on. A full composter with bone meal ready to collect will output a maximum signal of 8. Interesting redstone randomizers could be created with this mechanic.

5. Bass Note Blocks

Similarly to some other blocks, composters can be placed under the note blocks, and it will change the note block’s sound to a “bass” variant.

Just like that, you now know five important uses of a composter. If you put in a bit of effort, you can create bone meal with this block, which can even significantly speed up the early gameplay. Though composter is not good only in the early game, since by combining a moss farm and a composter set-up, you can get infinite bone meal in the late game.