Tutorials/Sugar cane farming

Sugar cane must be planted on a grass, dirt or sand block that is directly adjacent to water (not merely above or diagonal to water), when fully grown it will stand three blocks high of sugar cane. Mature sugar cane should be harvested by hitting the middle block, to avoid replanting.

Sugar cane, like saplings, wheat, and cacti, will only grow if the chunk they are on is loaded into memory, so a player should not venture too far from the field.

Manual farming design
Sugar cane can be farmed manually by hitting every middle block of mature sugar cane. Water and sugar can be placed, in different patterns.

A complex pattern of interspersed water blocks can get you about 80% efficiency (plants per block of farm), but harvesting it is somewhat difficult. Slabs, or especially lily pads, can be placed over the water to ease harvesting.

Long parallel rows between canals get roughly 65% efficiency, but are much easier to harvest. Also, you have a clear line of sight down the rows, making it much easier to check for lurking creepers or such.

Note that sugar cane needs to be next to water, but not necessarily a source block. Thus you can run 8-block long canals down 1-deep trenches, with source blocks only at the outer ends. 3 canals with 6 rows of cane can feed into a 2-deep canal (also 8 blocks long), which in turn feeds into a hopper. Cover the 2-deep trench with slabs, and one piece of fence over the hopper. This gives you a 9&times;9 farm with 48 cane plants. Mirror this twice around the hopper, and you have a 17&times;17 farm with 192 plants. Any cane you miss running down the rows will end up in the hopper, which you can get at through the fence.

Semi-automatic farming design
A semi automatic farming design uses pistons, that break sugar cane and send the items to a collection point, where the player can gather it all, or a hopper for automatic gathering since the 1.5 update. Unlike the fully automatic design in the semi-automatic pistons are triggered by the player.

Water canal design
In the following design a row of pistons push the sugar cane to a water canal:

Tower design
Instead of using slow water canals to deliver the items to the player, gravity can be used for a much faster retrieval, building a vertical tower farm, as shown in the following video:

Fully automatic design
A fully automatic design unlike the semi-automatic ones is triggered automatically either by redstone clocks or block detector mechanisms.

Daylight sensor
This design is triggered once every Minecraft day (20 minutes of gameplay) with a daily pulse generator that uses a daylight sensor. The items are gathered by an array of hoppers and stored in chests. The design is stackable.

Block detector
This design uses a block update detector (BUD) mechanism that triggers the mechanism when a sugar cane farm grows to its full size. Items are gathered by flowing water and hoppers, that store them into chests. The design is stackable. The more BUDs placed the more sugar cane rate collection achieved, as the sugar cane where the BUD is placed can take much time to grow, while other ones may be fully grown and not generating any new sugar cane blocks.

Completely automated design
A dispenser based clock can be fed via hopper (or dropper, depending on vertical level) chain directly from the farm output. A comparator can be used to measure when the last hopper begins to fill with items, triggering a secondary chain of hoppers to feed further harvest into a chest for pickup. A T-flop can be used to trigger the farm every ten minutes, or a counter can be used to pick any increment of 5, for better efficiency. Note: A pulse limiter is needed between the T-flop or counter output and the farm pistons, else the pistons will simply stay in the extended position and inhibit growth.

Тростниковая ферма