There are 8 simple steps to grow melons inMinecraft.

To grow a melon or pumpkin, you need to plant the seeds on farmland.The seeds will turn into a stem if there is a light level of 9 or higher above the seeds.Use bone meal on the seeds to skip this process.There is a chance that a fruit block will appear on any of the four adjacent blocks, but only if there is enough air and space.The same lighting condition as for growing seeds applies here.If the stem is placed directly above it, opaque blocks will stop it from growing and producing fruit.If the light level is less than 8 during the day, the stem will be destroyed.Unlighted caves.

All stems on adjacent blocks will stop growing fruit once a fruit has been spawned.It doesn't matter where the fruit came from.A fruit block that came from a different stem will stop production if placed manually.The stem won't produce any more fruits if there's a fruit in one of the four possible spots.A melon block won't affect a pumpkin stem.

There are a number of factors that affect how fast a stem will grow.They're the same as for growing wheat.

To make your fruit grow fast, it is important to have farmland that is hydrated below the stem and at the 8 surrounding blocks.Dry farmland is less effective than if you place any type of seeds on it.The block below the stem contributes four times as much as any adjacent block to the resulting speed.If you don't know how to fertilize farmland, read the related article.

It takes 13 random ticks for a stem on dry farmland with no surrounding farmland to grow a fruit.A stem on farmland needs 7 random ticks on average.It takes just 3 random ticks when surrounded by hydrated farmland blocks.Random ticks occur less frequently than game ticks, and as the name suggests, they occur randomly.They are used for a lot of other things.Mushroom spread farmland, leaf decay, grass spread and decay are some of the things that can happen.Random ticks happen every 68 seconds for a given block.

The table shows the required time for a stem on hydrated farmland in relation to the amount of surrounding farmland blocks, assuming that there are always 4 spots for fruit to grow on.

It will take the stem two times as long to produce a fruit if these conditions are met.

There is only one adjacent stem in Stems 1 and 7.They're not punished.Stem 2 is not punished because the adjacent stems are in a row.Stems 3, 4 and 6 are affected by the fact that the adjacent stems aren't in a row.

The number of spots fruits can be found has an impact on productivity.If a fruit can be found on all four blocks, your stems will produce at their maximum speed.The required time will increase if there are only three spots.It will take twice as long for two spots and 400% for one.If it doesn't qualify, the whole spawning process will be skipped, instead of choosing a different spot.

The following things should be considered when building a melon or pumpkin farm.

You can place wheat or flowers on top of the farmland to keep it from turning to dirt.It is worthwhile to replant the dirt on which the fruit has grown after a harvest.

If you apply the criteria mentioned above, you may be able to improve your current farm.Hydrate dry farmland if it's there.Put more farmland there if there are unused blocks around your stems.

The farm works like this: whenever you use the lever at the front, some underground sticky pistons push all the melons up, before they are crushed by the glass blocks.The spawned items are pushed into the water stream by the glass blocks.

The farm can be improved by placing more farmland blocks around the stems.The glass blocks used to crush the melons can be replaced with glowstone, which will provide sufficient lighting at all times and prevent hostile mobs from spawning.

The melon stems are surrounded by farmland.The rows where the melons are supposed to be are left out.melons are prevented from spawning by flowersInstead of having 2 adjacent farmland blocks, every stem now has 5 such neighbors.The first and last stem of the row went from one block to the other.

The perfect layout depends on whether you want the farm to produce as much fruit as possible over a long period of time or if you just want it to be sporadic.It's difficult to predict how efficient a layout will be.

I made a simulation to make sure I didn't leave you hanging.I used a fixed size of 21x21 blocks.Water blocks are needed to keep the farmland hydrated.You'd have to replant after each harvest if the simulation is correct.

To see a sketch of the layout, click here.The amount of spawned fruit is represented by the y-axis, while the x- axis shows the time passed in random ticks.

The 2 stem, 2 farmland layout (blue line) has the highest capacity as it allows fruit to grow on every second block and is best used for infrequent harvests.It is rather slow because the stems are punished for having diagonal neighbors.Thecyan line starts relatively fast, but has a very low capacity since one fruit blocks up to 4 stems.The remaining layouts have the same capacity.When the 1 stem, 2 farmland layout catches up, it will be the winner until about 10RT.The 2 stem, 1 farmland layout is inferior until it reaches its capacity.