Dirt

Dirt was one of the first blocks introduced in the game. It uses the same texture on all six sides of the block. Dirt is very common on normally generated maps, making up the majority of the top layers of blocks, between Grass or Snow and Stone. It is also found underground in clumps in all altitudes and can also be found in the bottom of deep waters. It is a very weak type of block and is easily destroyed in explosions from TNT or Creepers, making dirt shelters a fallback option at best. Oftentimes, better resources to make shelters are available from the very moment the game is started. Dirt is generally used for terraforming. When a Dirt block is adjacent to a Grass block and is exposed to a light level of at least 4 (usually from torches or sunlight), it will eventually be converted into a Grass block; the exact time this happens is random and unpredictable. It is useful as Scaffolding because of its abundance.

Dirt is simple to mine and is often acquired in large amounts when unmonitored during its excavation. It will always drop a resource block, regardless of how it was mined. It may be mined by hand fairly quickly, but using a shovel will significantly speed up the process.

Using a hoe on a placed block of dirt will turn it into a Farmland block, enabling seeds to be planted on it.

Dirt is not used in any default crafting recipes whatsoever; the only functionality offered by this block is as a necessity for growing certain plants, and as a cheap material for when a player wishes to block off branches of a cavern, build walls or scaffolds, or any similar task that requires a medium to large number of blocks that are not affected by gravity.

A bug in Minecraft Beta 1.8 pre-release allowed any block (including bedrock) to change into dirt when a Huge Mushroom was grown on it. This was later fixed in the second pre-release of version 1.8 so that huge mushrooms can only be grown on dirt or grass. Dirt can also have grass and mycelium spread on to the block if there is a mycelium or grassy dirt block next to it.

History
As of Beta 1.9 pre5, dirt's texture in the was changed, having a very slightly higher contrast. It went from to.

Erde Dirt/es Terre Föld 흙 Aarde Ziemia pt-br:Dirt Земля 泥土