How to Grow Sugar Cane In Minecraft? Step By Step Guide

If you’re looking to expand your Minecraft farming horizons, sugar cane is a great crop to add to your farming plots.

With the right farm, you can grow an abundance of this sweet plant and use it to make all sorts of goodies such as sugar for potions and paper for enchanted books.

In this article, we’ll teach you everything you need to know about how to grow sugar cane in Minecraft!

Finding Sugar Cane in your world

First, to grow your own sugar cane, you’re going to need to find it naturally generating in your world. This is not too difficult, as it spawns naturally near water two, three, or four blocks tall.

The game attempts to spawn sugar cane in twice as many frequencies in swamp biomes and six times as much in desert biomes.

If you need a lot of cane fast, go check out these biomes first. Once you’ve found some, give it a punch and pick it up (make sure you’ve got enough room in your inventory!).

And of course, if you’re in creative mode, you can go ahead and spawn it using the cheat menu.

What are the requirements to grow sugar cane?

Now that you’ve got some, you can start growing your own sugar cane in your world. To do this, place the sugar cane near a water source block (a waterlogged block or frosted ice block will work too).

This water source has to be directly adjacent to the cane or you will not be able to grow the crop.

There are a few blocks you can place your sugar cane on:

Grass
Dirt
Coarse Dirt
Rooted Dirt
Moss block
Mycelium
Red sand
Sand
Podzol

And unlike other plant-based crops in Minecraft, sugar cane does not depend on light to grow.

This means you can get really creative with how you go about creating your sugar cane farm, you could even set one up in your own base if you wanted to!

Step by Step Guide on How to Grow Sugar Cane in Minecraft

Although I’ve given you all the necessary information to start growing your own sugar cane, here is a step-by-step guide to making growing your own sugar cane easy.

1. Find Sugar Cane in the world

Sugar cane naturally spawns near water blocks, but it can be found much easier (and more of it) if you explore desert biomes or explore your local swamps.

Once you find some, just punch it and pick it up!

2. Get some water

Either make yourself a bucket and grab some water or just go find a lake/ocean near your house.

3. Place the sugar cane near water

Now, you’re going to want to place your sugar cane adjacent to the water block, just like the image below.

4. Wait!

And now, you wait! It will take about 12 minutes for your sugar cane to fully grow so have a little patience.

5. Or use bone meal to speed things up

You can speed up the growth by using bonemeal on the sugar cane if you urgently need it.

6. Harvest the sugar cane

Once your sugar cane has fully grown, just punch it, and it’s all yours!

7. Replant

I’d advise replanting at least half of what you’ve just harvested so you can grow even more next time.

How to grow sugar cane faster?

You might just hate sitting around for things to grow or you just desperately need some paper to create some fireworks.

Whatever the case may be, there are a few ways you can make sugar cane grow faster in your Minecraft world, here they are…

1. Use bonemeal on your sugar cane to make it grow faster

Bonemeal works on crops like carrots and potatoes but did you know you can also speed the growth of your sugar cane up too?

To make a bone meal, you just need to place a bone in your crafting menu (which you get from killing Skeletons) and then you’ve got bonemeal!

Then you just want to get the bonemeal in your hand and right-click the sugar cane, and it will grow before your very eyes.

2. Create yourself a 0 tick sugar cane farm

In Minecraft, 0 tick farming is a way of farming that allows you to get items such as sugar cane, wheat, and more at a much faster rate.

Essentially, you’re exploiting the game in a way that forces it to make a growth update, which makes sugar cane grow almost instantly.

This is not considered cheating either!

It can be quite hard to understand, so here is a video that goes over the method:

What can you do with sugar cane in Minecraft?

There are a couple of things you can do with sugar cane, other than just growing stacks and stacks of the stuff.

Firstly, sugar cane can be placed in a line in your crafting menu to give you paper.

What can you do with sugar cane in Minecraft

This then can be made into books, maps, banners, and even fireworks, just to name a couple of necessary items for your survival… as long as you’ve got the other items required for the crafting recipe of course!

Most commonly though, sugar cane can be turned into sugar by simply placing it into your crafting menu.

This can then be used to create potions or bake yourself a cake.

FAQ’s

Q. Why is my sugar cane not growing?

There are countless reasons as to why your sugar cane may not be growing.

Here are some things to check up on to make sure you’ve got your setup right…in the end you might find that you just need a little bit more patience!

– Make sure the sugar cane is planted near water. The water block needs to be adjacent to will help it grow.

– Make sure there is a direct line of sight between the sugar cane and the water source. If there are any blocks in the way, it will not be able to grow.

– The sugar cane block cannot be submerged in water, it has to be adjacent to a water block.

– If there is a block above the sugar cane, it will not be able to grow.

– Sugar cane will not grow if it is directly next to a furnace or an inferno block. It can, however, grow near a lit campfire, blaze spawner, or lava source block.

– Sugar cane takes about 12 minutes to fully grow once it has been placed near a water block.

Q. Can sugar cane grow next to flowing water?

Yes! As long as the sugar cane is adjacent to the flowing water, and there is no block blocking its growth, then it will be able to grow.

And don’t worry about flowing water being a ‘weaker’ water source, it will grow at the same speed as it would if it were next to a regular water block or block of ice.

Q. Does sugar cane grow faster on sand?

Sugar cane does not grow faster on a sand block.

It grows at the same speed as it would if it were on Grass, Dirt, Coarse Dirt, Rooted Dirt, Moss block, Mycelium, Red sand, Sand, or Podzol.