Tutorials/Tree farming

Tree farming is the process of planting a large number of saplings and waiting for them to grow into trees. These trees are then harvested for wood and more saplings, which can be used to grow another generation of trees. This can be repeated indefinitely, yielding a regular supply of logs without the hassle of covering large areas of terrain. A secondary benefit of tree farming is that it allows conservation of the surrounding environment.

Some players prefer to farm larger trees, as they yield more logs per tree or per sapling while most players prefer to farm smaller trees, as all the wood can be easily harvested from the ground and "floating canopies" do not persist as long. For more information on the mechanics of tree growth, consult the article on trees.

Advantages

 * Easiest tree to find.
 * Due to large trees and their large number of leaves, give, on average, more sapling increase.
 * Take less space than other trees and can be grown in small spaces.
 * Small chance for leaves to produce Red Apple

Disadvantages

 * Large trees are a pain to harvest.
 * In multiplayer, some players will only harvest the reachable blocks and leave the canopies floating. This causes the landscape to look unattractive.

Advantages

 * Fastest growing tree.
 * Easy to harvest.
 * Slightly larger than oak trees.
 * Small enough to harvest completely if you stand on the stump or ground.

Disadvantages

 * Quite hard to find unless you're in a forest biome.

Advantages

 * Tall; gives a lot of wood consistently.

Disadvantages

 * Tall; difficult to harvest.
 * Has few leaves, so fewer saplings.

Advantages

 * Very Large; four saplings can give up to two stacks of logs.
 * Easy, time efficient harvesting if you wait for the vines to grow, climb them, and work from the top down.

Disadvantages

 * Difficult to grow, as it requires four jungle saplings, the hardest type to find unless you're near a jungle biome.
 * Require a huge open space, unsuitable for small spaces, indoor, underground, or stealthy farming.
 * Saplings drop very rarely, making your farm grow slowly; sometimes not at all if you use small trees.
 * Moderately dangerous, as you can die from falling.
 * If you instead chose to spiral up it and get the rest on the way back down, cutting down on efficiency.

A thing to keep in mind
Because all tree types have different advantages and disadvantages, the best tree to choose can vary with the situation. Oak trees are best in at the beginning of the game or compact spaces; birch is best in moderately sized fields or a community farm, and jungle trees are best for mass-production of wood late in the game, when you have plenty of time and space on your hands.

Since 1.2.4, wood from different trees is now a different color. If building wooden structures, you may wish to chose a specific tree for its color of wood. Because the efficiency difference of different tree types is only slight, this often takes priority. If building with multiple wood types, having a tree farm for each is also useful.

Jungle Tree Farming
As of 1.2, jungle trees can now be planted and grown just like any other tree. Unless you want jungle wood, this is not very useful, as they are slightly too large to harvest easily and drop saplings rarely. However, they can also be grown into the large 2*2 tree (which yields upwards of two full stacks of wood) if four saplings are planted in a 2*2 formation. This can be utilized like this:

[JJ] [JJ]

J=jungle sapling. Then, if a bonemeal is used on the jungle saplings, a big jungle tree with a 2X2 thick trunk will grow. This method returns, on average, ~96 wood per 4 saplings.

Efficient tree farming
Trees now grow branches if the height is capped at 8.

Since trees begin to grow branches on their main trunks once they reach a height of 6 blocks or more and the player can only harvest 6 blocks above the ground without climbing on something, the most efficient tree farm design limits the height of trees to 8 blocks. This allows 6 blocks of logs as a "trunk" and 2 block of leaves above that. This is accomplished by adding a ceiling at 9th block above the ground, leaving a space 8 blocks high in which trees can grow. This allows all of the wood from the trees to be harvested quickly and with minimal effort.

It should be noted that leaving 8 blocks of space for trees to grow will not guarantee that all trees grow to this height. Trees will grow with trunks 4, 5 and 6 blocks in height, but not higher.

This height issue can also be avoided by planting a sapling on the bottom of a 2-block-deep hole. This ensures that the top layer of the tree will still be reachable, and has the added benefit of preventing mobs from hiding in the shadow of the tree and surviving daylight.

While prior to the Halloween update (31 Oct 2010), leaves were able to break glass and torches when growing horizontally, that is no longer true in post-Halloween and Beta versions.

Note: As of Beta 1.2_01 trees once again break torches - reportedly spruce trees, more specifically.

Since trees will grow quite happily underground with a nearby light source, and will grow when in direct or diagonal contact with other trees, quite compact arrangements can be used for efficient use of space. The images to the right show that trees will grow quite happily in confined spaces and in close packed arrangements.

Underground saplings rely on torch light to grow. Various patterns of saplings and torches can be used to achieve varying degrees of space efficiency. Since saplings only require light level 9 to grow, a single torch starting at light level 14 can sufficiently light 60 saplings. However, this torch-efficient model comes at the cost of stability. Trees can grow and block the torch light to other saplings. Underground tree farms should stay clear of magma because a bug relating to the South/East rule may let magma affect any leaf/wood blocks occupying the same corner.

80% efficiency farming
The most space-efficient way to prevent grown trees from blocking light to other saplings is to have every sapling directly next to a torch (not diagonal). This strategy yields a maximum space efficiency of 80% since the pattern is made up of units of 1 torch + 4 saplings. The plus-sign shaped units can be arranged to completely fill an area.

For example, the following diagram shows an 11 by 7 farm, utilizing 61 saplings and 22 torches, with a perimeter walkway.

While an odd-shaped 80% efficient farm is possible, this design sacrifices some efficiency (79.2% efficient in an 11x7 farm, not counting the walkway) for ease of maintenance by including a rectangle perimeter walkway around the farm. The torches placed on the walkway are required for lighting the immediately adjacent saplings.

It is recommended that the perimeter walkway and all blocks with a torch underneath be a different material, such as cobblestone. This will allow for quick visual identification during re-planting, of which blocks get saplings and which get torches that may have been inadvertently knocked out during harvest. It is recommended to do the same for torches on the wall, as these may get knocked off by growing trees.

An improvement on this design is the following. A 16 by 7 farm, utilizing 94 Saplings and 24 torches, with a perimeter walkway.

This design takes account for the fact that all saplings adjacent to the walkway are supplied by light from the torches on the walkway. Thus the farm yields a efficiency of 84%.

Note when the tree farm is cut down, the amount of returned saplings per tree is much lower than cutting trees in a forest as the canopy is shared by many trees. Therefore, when starting the farm, growing them more spaced out will yield more saplings per tree, allowing to get enough saplings for a desired tree farm size more quickly.

The same principle can be applied to sugar cane farms by replacing the torches with water and the trees with sugar cane. This can create a dual purpose farm by placing water with glowstone on top, this allows either trees or sugarcane (or both) to grow.

Farming Spruce and Birch Trees


Unlike oak trees, spruce and birch trees will never grow to a branched tree. This makes them easier to harvest, but to farm Birch and Spruce trees efficiently, more space is required. Birches can be planted next to other birches with 2 blocks of space between them since the birch leaves can overlap with other birch leaves. This same spacing holds true for spruces. However, when planting the different types of trees together, birch and spruce trees need 4 blocks of space in between the saplings (the tree will not grow if leaves of a different tree are obstructing its path). Both birch and spruce trees require 9 blocks of vertical space above the sapling to grow regularly (10 is more efficient for growth). Both Spruce and Birch will grow with less space, but not as regularly. Light requirements are the same as normal saplings.

Force growing trees
You can force grow a tree by limiting its minimum growth height, forcing it to grow as a certain size. This is done by placing blocks around the lower area, typically a loop of blocks floating around the sapling at a height of three or four blocks, with an opening in the center for the future trunk to grow through. This will prevent the tree from growing if it would collide with the blocks above, causing it to instead choose another height and attempt to grow again until it finds one which will allow it to grow through the hole. As a result, natural growth of such "tube trees" usually takes longer than others. If Bone Meal is used to facilitate growth, they will be consumed without result until the sapling finds an acceptable height. This method will not force a tree to grow above the maximum height. This can be seen in the gallery.

Automated Tree Farming/Harvesting
In order to save yourself time from clearing leaves and walking from tree to tree, harvesting lumber can be automated. Through the use of sand and pistons, logs can be condensed into easy-to-harvest cubes.

Here is a video showing this type of automation in action:

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