Automatic Bamboo Farm — 3D Build Guide
The bamboo grows, an observer sees it, a piston cuts it, a hopper collects it.
A row of 8 bamboo on observers and pistons, built block by block in 3D. The layout was built and run on a vanilla Minecraft 26.3 server before it got here: about 140 bamboo an hour, enough fuel for a row of furnaces.
How to build the bamboo farm, step by step
- Hoppers and a chest — Sink a row of 8 hoppers one block into the ground, each pointing east into the next, with a chest at the end.
- Mud on the hoppers — Put a block of mud on every hopper: a stalk lying on mud is inside the hopper's pick-up area.
- Base for the wall — Bamboo needs no water: lay a row of cobblestone along the mud for the glass wall to stand on.
- Glass walls — Raise glass four blocks high along the row and at both ends. Leave the top open: bamboo needs light level 9 or more above it to grow.
- Plant the row — Plant bamboo on every block of mud. A planted shoot turns into a stalk on its own.
- Pistons on the second block — Behind the row, at the height of the second stalk block, place a piston facing the plants on a block of cobblestone.
- Observers above the pistons — Put an observer on every piston, its face towards the plants, and cover the observers with glass.
- Redstone line — Behind the pistons lay a row of cobblestone and a line of redstone dust on it, right behind the observers. Any observer fires the whole row.
- The farm at work — Bamboo grows with a fixed chance on every random tick, so cutting the row together costs nothing: about 17.6 bamboo an hour per plant, about 140 an hour from a row of 8.
Bamboo farm — questions
How fast does bamboo grow in Minecraft?
On every random tick a bamboo stalk has a 1-in-3 chance to grow one block, so a block appears about every 3.4 minutes and one plant gives about 17.6 bamboo an hour. It needs light level 9 or more above its top and grows up to 16 blocks.
How much bamboo does this farm make?
About 140 bamboo an hour from the row of 8. In a test on a vanilla 26.3 server the row gave 239 bamboo where the calculation said 234. Because bamboo grows with a fixed chance, cutting the whole row at once does not slow it down.
What is a bamboo farm good for?
Bamboo is a furnace fuel: one piece smelts a quarter of an item, so a stack of 64 smelts 16. It also makes sticks, bamboo planks and scaffolding for building.
Why must the top of a bamboo farm stay open?
Bamboo grows only with light level 9 or more above its top. A roof over the plants keeps them dark and the farm stops. Only the observers get a glass cover, so drops cannot land on them.
Do I plant bamboo or a bamboo shoot?
Place a bamboo item on the mud. It becomes a bamboo shoot and turns into a stalk on its own, then keeps growing.