User:MentalMouse42/Sandbox/Melon Farming

For other types of farming see Farming (disambiguation)

Introduction
Melons and Pumpkins use essentially the same mechanics for growth, and can be easily farmed with the same techniques. Once the plants are mature, they will provide a steady supply of fruit for your needs.


 * 1) Pumpkin and melon seeds are both found in Abandoned Mine Shaft chests, but pumpkins can also be found growing "wild" in several biomes, while Melon Slices can sometimes be bought from Villagers.  In both cases, the fruit (pumpkins or melon slices) can be crafted back into seeds.


 * 1) Planting a seed into Farmland produces a small stem that grows over time. Like regular seeds, melon and pumpkin stems grow faster if their block is "hydrated" (has a block of water within 4 blocks of it).  However, hydration doesn't affect melon spawning speed once the stem has fully grown. Bone Meal will force a stem to maturity, but will not immediately produce fruit.
 * 2) Once the stem is mature it will begin spawning fruit (Melon Blocks or Pumpkins).  Each stem's fruit will appear in one of the four adjacent Dirt, Grass, or Farmland blocks, every 1–30 minutes real time (0.05-1.5 Minecraft days) and the stalk will visually connect to it.   Note that if a fruit forms next to another plant's stem, the other stems may connect to it instead of spawning.
 * 3) Once a fruit has grown (or the stem has attached to an existing fruit), the stem will not produce any further fruit until the existing one is harvested.  Also, if the block directly above a stem is occupied by a solid (and non-transparent) block, the stem will not bear fruit.
 * 4) Both sorts of fruit will revert farmland below them to dirt when they grow.

Farm Layouts
Here are some suitable layouts. Percentages given are efficiencies. These assume there are free blocks surrounding the farm for the border plants to place melons. The theoretical maximum efficiency is 50% (one melon per stem).

For high melon per block yield, the following methods can be used. Question marks indicate anything could be put there -- wheat, lighting, even a few more melon plants. You will probably want to cover the water with a slab.



These six were in three rows on the Melon page.

Grid A

9x10@48.88%

Grid B

9x8@48.61%

Grid C

9x9@44.44%

Grid D

9x9@44.44%

Grid E

9x9@22.22%-33.33% (43.20%)

Grid F

9x9@29.62% (44.44%)

With all these, both farm blocks and seed blocks will be hydrated. The top-left method (A) has an efficiency of 48.88% which can be maintained by inverting the design when tiling the long dimension. The top-right (B) is 48.61% efficient, while the middle designs (C & D) are both 44.44% efficient. The efficiency of the bottom row (E, F) designs vary. In 1.0 and below the top-left is only 38.88% efficient but can be tiled with the top-right to get a 48.76% efficient farm. The percentages in round brackets are maximum efficiencies if there are no other farms adjacent to it, and include a chance of growing fruit outside of the farm area (meaning they assume a border of dirt surrounding the farm). But again, that's maximum efficiency, and it varies (if fruit instead grows inside the farm area, the efficiency drops). Wheat could be grown in the spaces marked '?' to avoid wasting potential hydrated farmland blocks.

While all above designs use one layer, the most efficient, 49.38% farm can be created by using two layers. Design is based on design C:

x x x x % x x x x             % % % % ? % % % %         x x x x. x x x x. . . . ? . . . .         x x x x. x x x x. . . . ? . . . .         x x x x % x x x x              % % % % ? % % % % top:    %. . % = % . . %   bottom:   ? ? ? ? = ? ? ? ?         x x x x % x x x x              % % % % ? % % % %         x x x x. x x x x. . . . ? . . . .         x x x x. x x x x. . . . ? . . . .         x x x x % x x x x              % % % % ? % % % % x air (empty)

While this design has spots where you need to jump when made in larger scale, there is even cleaner design with same efficiency. In this design the water source must be isolated, so it would stay in 1x1 area and won't spread into '+' sign. It should be placed at least 2 blocks above the first farm layer, so it would be possible to place light source: x x x x x x x x x             x x x x x x x x x           x x x x x x x x x              x x x x x x x x x           x x x x x x x x x              x x x x x x x x x           x x x x ? x x x x             x x x x x x x x x   top:    x x x ? S ? x x x   2nd:      x x x x = x x x x  (1st)    x x x x ? x x x x             x x x x x x x x x           x x x x x x x x x              x x x x x x x x x           x x x x x x x x x              x x x x x x x x x           x x x x x x x x x              x x x x x x x x x           x x x x x x x x x              % % % % % % % % % x x x x x x x x x. . . . . . . . .          x x x x x x x x x. . . . . . . . .          x x x x x x x x x              % % % % % % % % % 3rd:   %. . % = % . . %   bottom:   ? ? ? ? = ? ? ? ?          x x x x x x x x x     (4th)    % % % % % % % % % x x x x x x x x x. . . . . . . . .          x x x x x x x x x. . . . . . . . .          x x x x x x x x x              % % % % % % % % % S water source block     = falling water

The position of the melon stems and farmland, dirt or grass blocks in the 3rd and 4th layers can be swapped with the same efficiency, still 44.44% efficiency for the 4th layer.

The above layout is optimized for infrequent harvests, with plenty of time for the field to regrow in between. For frequent harvests, the following layout may be better suited; if harvested once per day-and-night cycle, it yields about 17 melons per harvest (as opposed to about 13 melons for the above designs):



Auto-Harvesting farms


Melons are destroyed and drop Melon Slices when a Piston of any kind pushes it, leading the possibility for auto-harvesting Melon farms. A simple Auto-Harvester would be made by placing an up-facing sticky piston under each farmland block reserved for melons. When the sticky pistons are powered, they destroy all of the melons for pickup by the player. Using this technique, one can make a fully automatic farm, but it uses up some space, shown here.