Tree Farm
Beginner Java + Bedrock
Produces: Logs of every wood type, saplings, apples (oak and dark oak) and sticks from leftover leaves
Quick answer: A tree farm is a planted grid of saplings you bone meal and chop on a loop. Dark oak grows only from 2x2 sapling squares, oaks and dark oaks drop apples, and a Fortune axe on the leaves pays the saplings back with interest.
How it works
- Saplings grow in two hidden stages: bone meal skips ahead instantly, while natural growth needs light level 9 or higher above the sapling - torches or glowstone keep a farm running underground or at night.
- Dark oak and the giant spruce, jungle and pale oak variants only grow from four saplings planted in a 2x2 square.
- When broken or decayed, leaves can drop a sapling of their own species. Oak and dark oak leaves also have a 1/200 chance of dropping an apple.
- Oaks and dark oaks drop apples from their leaves - dark oak 2x2 farms are the classic renewable apple source.
- Spruce 2x2 mega trees convert podzol and give the most wood per bonemeal, but their height (up to 31 blocks) makes manual harvesting slow - pick tree size to match how lazy you want the chopping to be.
Materials
- Saplings of your chosen wood (dark oak needs 4 per tree)
- Bone meal - a composter loop or skeleton farm keeps you stocked
- An axe, ideally Efficiency IV-V; Fortune III for leaf-clearing
- Torches or glowstone for light level 9+ above every sapling
- Optional: hoppers and chests for a collection pad
Build steps
- Pick your tree: birch for easy chopping (max 7 tall), spruce or jungle 2x2 for bulk wood, dark oak 2x2 for apples and thick trunks.
- Lay out the grid: single saplings every 4-5 blocks so canopies do not tangle; 2x2 squares spaced 6+ blocks apart for the giants.
- Light it: torch every few blocks so the block above each sapling reads light level 9+ - underground farms need this, surface farms only at night.
- Bone meal each sapling until the tree pops - one to three meals usually does it.
- Chop from the top down or pillar up: birch and oak come down from the ground, mega trees want a spiral staircase of their own logs.
- Replant immediately from your sapling stock - the farm only works as a loop.
- Sweep the leaves with a Fortune axe for saplings, apples and sticks, or let them decay while you plant the next row.
- Upgrade later: once the manual grid works, you can move to automatic designs.
Rates
A 20-tree manual grid with bone meal yields several stacks of logs per ten-minute cycle and always pays its saplings back; dark oak 2x2 loops additionally return a steady trickle of apples.
Tips
- Birch is the beginner pick: it never grows tall variants, so every tree chops from flat ground.
- 2x2 trees need free space around and above them: if something is in the way, the tree does not grow.
- Compost your excess saplings: each has a 30% chance to raise the compost level, feeding bone meal back into the loop.
- An Efficiency axe speeds up chopping a lot; the wiki suggests picking the tree by available space and how easy it is to automate.
- Source: minecraft.wiki Tutorial:Tree farming.