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Bone Meal means happy crops, and happy crops mean full stomachs. Surviving in Minecraft requires lots of food, but crops can take forever to grow on their own. Bone Meal lets you kick-start those verdant veggies, cutting growth times and ensuring no Zombies snack on your depleted body. Whether you want to feed a community Stardew Valley-style or just want something for your personal pumpkin patch, a Composter is the solution. With it, you can churn out all the Bone Meal you want, keeping your garden fed and flourishing. Here’s how to make and use a Composter in Minecraft.
Minecraft Composter Recipe
(Updated on May 23rd, 2024 – updated images and usage instructions)
Items like the Composter and Blast Furnace play a niche role in your crafting adventures, so you won’t need them on your first few nights of survival. Once you get into agriculture, however, a Composter is a must-have. The crafting recipe for the Composter is 7 wooden slabs of any variety, placed in a U shape on a crafting table (pictured above). You can craft Wooden Slabs by placing three blocks of wood in a horizontal line.
You can also find Composters in villages as job site blocks for farmer Villagers. You can use any tool to break them, but an axe is the fastest. Be aware that breaking a Composter destroys any compost within. With a Composter in hand, you can now place it wherever you please and start filling it with random junk. How appealing.
How to Use a Composter
For every acceptable object (mostly food and plant items) you add to a Composter, there is a chance that a level of compost will be created. Success rates vary from 30-100%, depending on the object. If you see green sparkles, the compost level has risen. Once you’ve created 7 layers of compost, the top of the bin will turn white. Now you can interact with it to receive 1 Bone Meal. Cake and Pie are the best compost items, but here are some top-tier substitutes if you’re all out of sweets:
- Baked Potato
- Bread
- Cookie
- Flowering Azalea
- Hay Bale
- Mushroom Blocks
- Nether Wart Block
- Pitcher Plant
- Torchflower
- Warped Wart Block
You can’t use Bamboo, Poisonous Potatoes, Dead Bushes, meat, or fish (along with obvious things like ores and lava). You can, however, automate the process by placing a Composter on top of a Hopper to funnel the Bone Meal into a chest for you. Compost smarter, not harder. With a bit of sweat (and some leftover cookies), you’ll have a flourishing garden in no time.
Minecraft is available for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Mobile.
