Tutorials/Cactus farming

Cactus Farming is a term or method used to describe the planting and then subsequent harvesting of the plant as it grows. (See Also:Cactus for specific information about the cactus.)

For most, harvesting cactus is pointless as it has no use (yet.) However some interesting configurations can be achived to create a large scale cactus farm by using creative structuring of water source blocks and sand. As refrenced on the cactus page it states that cactus grows only on sand, and with no adjacent blocks. Meaning nothing can be next to it.

Basic Setup
To construct your cactus farm, you can start small with a 7x7 area leveled flat. Begin by creating a 'border' for your cactus farm by placing cobblestone (or other material) in a square 7 blocks wide by 7 blocks long. Then take 4 blocks of sand and place them in the center so that they are not touching the wall or another sand block. (I'll provide photos later.) You will then need water. My advice would be to create an infinite spring block (a 2x2 square with 2 source blocks on opposite corners will create this. See: Water) Using your bucket and infinite water source, place springs on the bottom of the farming area. I would recommend working out a pattern that works best for you to create a non-flowing water pool, but that's just asthetics. After your water is done, place one block of cactus on each of the sand blocks. If you are doing this outside, you will not need a light source and your cactus will grow in about a day or so. If you are in a darkened dungeon You should place candles perpendicular to the cactus along the cobblestone wall you created.

Advanced Setup (Automatic Harvesting)
The concept behind this is done with the setup outlined above, except when constructing your building you need to place blocks two spaces above the sand, adjacent to (but not touching the sand) so that they float in the air. The reason behind this is that when cactus comes in contact with an adjacent block it will auto-shed the segment of cactus touching it. This way, when the cactus grows to it's 3rd segment high, your floating block will be adjacent to the cactus and when the cactus attempts to 'grow' again it will auto-shed it'self off and fall into the water.

Some notes about this though:
 * When a collectable block touches a cactus it will be destroyed. So sometimes when it auto-sheds itself the collectable cactus block will fall onto living cactus and destroy itself.
 * It may be more beneficial to place the block high enough so that when the 2nd segment attempts to grow it harvests itself. This reduces the waiting period of growth in the initial planting.
 * It is also possible to make a transport system for the cactus if you place a single water source in the corner of the 'box' you constructed for the farm. When placing the water block, you need to place it on the 2nd block above the ground to create a 'down fall' of water which then produces the required force to allow the water to reach the farthest corner away from the source block. With this setup it is possible to have the newly harvested cactus blocks float to a single collection point.

Food for Thought
It could also be designed to be built in a tower formation so that you have cactus farms stacked one on top of the other. If used in this method and the water flow idea above, you could have the area where the water collection point is fall down to the next level and act as the source water block for the level below it.