Bone meal is a material made from the bones of killed skeletons. It can be used as dye as well as a fertilizer for most plants.
Crafting
| Ingredients | Crafting recipe |
|---|---|
| Bone |
Usage
Dye
In Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education, bone meal can be:
- Applied to sheep to dye their wool, which can then be sheared for 1–3 blocks of white wool.
- Applied to tamed wolves to dye their collars.
- Applied to tamed cats to dye their collars.
- Used to dye or stain leather armor, beds, glass, terracotta and shulker boxes.
- Combined with gunpowder to make a firework star.
- Combined with a firework star to create a fade-to-color effect.
- Used to add patterns to banners.
- Used to dye shulkers in Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education.
- Used to dye water contained in cauldrons in Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education.
- Combined with sand and gravel to craft concrete powder.
- Combined with compounds to craft balloons or glow sticks in Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education.
- Used to change the color of text on signs or hanging signs.
Crafting ingredient
| Name | Ingredients | Crafting recipe |
|---|---|---|
| White Banner pattern | Bone Meal + Banner |
|
| White Banner image | Bone Meal + Banner + Vines or Bricks or Creeper Head or Wither Skeleton Skull or Oxeye Daisy or Enchanted Golden Apple |
|
| Bone Block | Bone Meal | |
| Gray Dye | Ink Sac or Black Dye + Bone Meal |
|
| Light Blue Dye | Lapis Lazuli or Blue Dye + Bone Meal |
|
| Lime Dye | Green Dye + Bone Meal |
|
| Magenta Dye | Lapis Lazuli or Blue Dye + Red Dye + Bone Meal |
|
| Pink Dye | Red Dye + Bone Meal |
|
| White Balloon | Latex + Bone Meal + Helium + Lead |
|
| White Bed | Any Bed + Bone Meal |
|
| White Concrete Powder | Bone Meal + Sand + Gravel |
|
| White Dye | Bone Meal | |
| White Firework Star | Gunpowder + Bone Meal + Head or Gold Nugget or Feather or Fire Charge + Glowstone Dust + Diamond |
|
| White Firework Star | White Firework Star + Bone Meal |
|
| White Glow Stick | Polyethylene + Hydrogen Peroxide + Bone Meal + Luminol |
|
| White Shulker Box | Any Shulker Box + Bone Meal |
|
| White Stained Glass | Glass + Bone Meal |
|
| White Stained Glass Pane | Glass Pane + Bone Meal |
|
| White Terracotta | Terracotta + Bone Meal |
|
| White Wool | Any Wool + Bone Meal |
Fertilizer
- Seeds, Potatoes, Carrots: When applied to the plant, it will accelerate its growth, either moving it to the next stage of growth or final stage depending on its current growth and amount of bone meal used.
- Melon and Pumpkin Seeds: When applied to the planted stem, the stem will grow to a later stage of development, and enough bone meal can grow a stem to full size. Bone meal only affects the stem itself; melons and pumpkins sprout from adult stems at a fixed rate which cannot be modified.
- Saplings: When applied, the bone meal is consumed and the sapling may grow instantly into a tree, provided it has enough space, light, and luck. Multiple uses of bone meal are necessary to achieve this.
- Grass Blocks: When applied to a grass block, the bone meal is consumed and tall grass, and usually a few flowers, form in a random pattern in a 10×10 area centered on the northwest corner of the grass block (the corner with the lowest X and Z values). This can be an effective method of gathering wheat seeds. Does not work on dirt. The flowers that appear are dependent on the biome, meaning that in order to obtain specific flowers, the player must travel to biomes where the flowers are found naturally. See flowers for more information.
- Mushrooms: When applied to a mushroom that is planted on dirt, it will eventually grow into a huge mushroom after enough uses. The sudden growth may cause nearby players to take suffocation damage if they occupy the space it needs to grow.
- Cocoa: When applied to planted cocoa plants, the bone meal is consumed and the cocoa plant grows instantly, ready to be harvested for cocoa beans.
Bone meal does not work on cacti, sugar cane, vines or Nether Wart.
Data values
Template:Dyes
Video
Bone Meal/video
History
| b | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.2 | Bone meal added. | ||||
| 1.6.6 | Bone meal can now be applied on grass blocks. | ||||
| 1.8 | 1.8-pre1 | Bone meal can be used on mushrooms to make Huge Mushrooms, and the block the mushroom is on changes to dirt. | |||
| 1.8-pre2 | Bone meal can now be applied on pumpkin and melon seeds. | ||||
| Bug in "1.8-pre1" fixed; huge mushrooms only grow on dirt and grass. | |||||
| r | |||||
| 1.3.1 | 12w19a | Bone meal can now be applied on cocoa beans. | |||
| 12w25a | Fixed being able to use bone meal in dark rooms. | ||||
| ? | A fully grown crop can no longer accept bone meal.[citation needed] | ||||
| 1.4.2 | 12w34a | Bone meal can be used to dye leather armor and tamed Wolf's collar. | |||
| 1.5 | 13w04a | Bone meal is significantly nerfed.
Wheat, melon and pumpkin seeds, potatoes and carrots: one bone meal is consumed for all seven stages of growth. (Melon and pumpkin seeds do not spawn right away)
| |||
| Green particles are now displayed when bone meal is used. | |||||
| Bone meal can be used from dispensers. | |||||
| 13w05a | Adjusted balancing of bonemeal. Growing a plant to its last state now takes on average 2-5 uses of bonemeal (results vary from plant to plant).[2] | ||||
| pocketa | |||||
| 0.3.3 | Added bone meal. | ||||
| 0.8.0 | build 2 | Nerfed like in the PC edition. | |||
| build 5 | Pumpkin and melon stems only grow by one when bone meal is used | ||||
| Flowers now spawn other flowers when Bone Meal is used. | |||||
| Can grow Ferns and Tall Grass in survival and creative. | |||||
| Now grows Sugar Cane to maximum height (exclusive to MCPE). | |||||
| Legacy Console Edition | |||||
| TU1 | Added bonemeal. | ||||
| Pi Edition | |||||
| 0.1.1 | Added bonemeal. | ||||
Trivia
- Bone meal's fertilizing properties make it ideal for growing large quantities of trees or wheat in tight spaces very quickly.
- Using bone meal over grass blocks immediately grows tall grass along with the flowers for that biome.
- Prior to version 1.7.2, when bone meal is used on a grass block, each new plant has a 90% chance of becoming tall grass. Each plant that is not tall grass has a 1 in 3 chance of becoming a rose (now known as a poppy), or a 2 in 3 chance of becoming a dandelion.
- Using bone meal to fertilize, harvest and replant seeds is a fast way of creating a large number of seeds at the expense of bone meal instead of harvesting tall grass. This method also produces wheat and can be used to replace traditional farming methods.
- One bone can be crafted to 3 bone meal, which means on a successful drop, you can get 3 or 6 units of bone meal from a single skeleton.
- There is a crafting recipe that uses white wool and bone meal. It is useless, however, because it outputs white wool, thus wasting bone meal.
- Tall grass planted with bone meal in an area already populated with grass blocks can force grass to appear up to 6 blocks away from where you originally used it. The chance of any plant growing on the block decreases with distance from the block which bone meal was used on, the chance becoming very small at 6 blocks distance.
- Bone meal can be used on the sides or bottom of a grass block, as well as on a grass block with plants already on top of it.
- Regardless of if it succeeds in fertilizing, bone meal makes green sparkles. However, like smoke from a torch, the sparkles only appear if the player has particles set All or Decreased.
See also
- Farming
- Wool Dyes
References