Ultimate Redstone Farming Tutorial – Get Rich Quick in Minecraft!

Hello everyone my name is pixel riffs and welcome back to the Minecraft Survival Guide I hope you’re all having a good day in today’s episode we’re going to do something about our crop Farm down here specifically the melon and pumpkin patch because this has been sat here for a while and it’s all

Manually harvested right now which currently presents a bit of a problem because I don’t come down here all that much anymore I’ve got golden carrots that I’m trading from the farmer up there but my melons and pumpkins have just been sat here for a while Gathering

Dust and I want to do something about that by creating an automatic farm that will work for both types of produce and will allow us to harvest these automatically store them in a chest in the background and use them whenever we want to what are the uses of melons and

Pumpkins though they’re actually one of the more useful trading resources when it comes to the farmer who’s trading me golden carrots recently I have just been breaking down a lot of the wood that I’ve been farming selling it to the Fletcher villager as sticks and then using those emeralds to buy golden

Carrots but actually when you take a look at the trades available to you from a farmer pumpkins and melons are some of the more lucrative trades especially now that Mojang have removed the exploit by which curing and zombifying and curing a villager multiple times would lead to

Steeper discounts on some of the items like wheat and beetroot the lowest we ever see these trades get is maybe closer to the 7 through 10 range for an emerald and that’s with stacking the zombification curing discount the hero of the village effect we get from defeating a villager raid and maybe some

Positive reputation from having traded with this villager a few times like if I trade my pumpkins to him right now and I guess in this case I would have to craft all of the melon slices into melons so let me do that real quick let me sell

This guy five melons and that should also increase our reputation with this villager a little bit and then the next time they update there’s a chance that with supply and demand mechanics and with a bit of positive trade these numbers start to go down a little

Bit but even so you’re still not going to get a onetoone trade on wheat anymore same with sticks and so the onetoone trades in a villagers profession are still going to be fairly valuable and if we can trade a stack of pumpkins for a stack of emeralds then that’s great of

Course it won’t be possible to do that in a single trade but it’s nice to have a stockpile of pumpkins and melons waiting in the background so that if you want to acquire some emeralds in a short span of time you can do that very easily

With a bank of farmer villagers so today we’re going to look at two different ways that you can automate a melon and pumpkin farm the first is going to be fairly light on Redstone components but is going to be slightly less efficient overall so consider that The Beginner’s

Automatic farm and then we’re going to move on to a design which is much more effective but requires a lot more components a lot more Redstone components specifically so we’re going to do a more advanced farm that is probably best approached once you’ve had more time to get set up in your world

And for each of those we’re going to need some fresh melon and pumpkin seeds so we’re going to go ahead and grab both of those and I’m going to drop off a handful of these blocks from the previous episode just so we have a nice clean inventory we’ll need a bunch of

Bone meal but not too much and we’ll need some components from the Redstone shelter box namely some Redstone Dust some pistons and some observers and it does make sense that we’d build this Farm around here next to the sugarcane Cactus and bamboo farms we’ve already

Got set up right this is going to be another little vegetable patch I think what we might end up doing is filling in this hole here not filling it in completely but at least leveling off the ground there so that we can use that space for something a little more

Productive than a hole in the ground we’ll make sure there are a couple of torches down here for lighting just so we don’t end up with too much zombie noise coming from a hole in the ground here and I’m actually going to start filling this in a little bit lower and

Leaving a few layers of dirt between us and where that cave was just so if a creeper comes along and blows this up it doesn’t reopen the hole to that cave the other benefit that leveling off the ground like this has is that if we’re going to dig into the ground which we’re

Inevitably going to have to here so that we can place some water sources it means we don’t don’t end up digging down one block and immediately encountering cave layers so we can place the water down and it flows where we want it to which in this case is going to be into a

Hopper at the end of this little row here so we have water flowing for eight blocks and arriving at a hopper and of course it starts raining well that’s actually a good thing because the rain is going to hydrate the Farmland that we’re about to make obviously it’s going

To be hydrated by the Water Source here but there we go we’re going to hoe out a patch of Farmland alternating every other block so that we have a dirt block in between it’s important that the blocks that we want the melons to grow on in this case are either dirt grass or

Some sort of variant thereof interestingly enough mud blocks also count despite the fact that they are functionally speaking a full block with the hitbox of something like Farmland which is a pixel lower but on each of these patches we’re going to grow a separate set of melon seeds and

Naturally if the Farmland is hydrated that will help them grow up into a stalk but the Farmland doesn’t actually need to be hydrated for melons to grow at the usual rate once the stalk is established the melons themselves won’t grow any faster if the Farmland is hydrated the

Water in this case is here as part of a collection mechanism so with a combination of the Redstone components and some solid blocks we’re actually going to block off anywhere that the melons might grow except for these blocks between the pieces of Farmland when a melon stalk is fully grown it

Will take the opportunity to grow a melon on any of the four adjacent blocks in the cardinal directions but we want it to just grow here so we’re going to be placing observers behind each of these melon stalks to track whether or not the stalk has grown a melon and in

The case of the ends of the farm we’re going to place two solid blocks adjacent to the Farmland patches and that pretty much guarantees with the water stream running along here that these melon stalks can only grow to the sides here and that’s where the melons are going to

Be detected and pushed off by Pistons so in between each of these observers we’re going to place a piston at at the end down here we’ll place two more solid blocks and then we’ll switch back to pistons and place those in between these observers as well then behind each of

The Observers we’re going to place a solid block to transmit the Redstone pulse whenever the Observer detects any change in the stalk in front of it and between each of those we’re going to place a piece of redstone dust to transmit the power from that Observer to

This piston we’ll do that all the way along the row and all the way along the other side and that is this melon and pumpkin farm pretty much done we can grow the stalks manually a little using bone meal since we have so much of it

And as we do that you’ll actually see the farm in action because the Observer detects a change in state in the stalk in front of it and as it finishes growing that piston will fire a couple of times now whenever this stalk grows a melon the stalk will actually change

State one more time because it will change to the state where it is connected to the melon it has just grown and when it does that the Observer is going to activate the Pistons to either side of that stalk because it’s detecting that it’s connected to one

Side or the other but it can’t necessarily detect which side so the fact that this Observer feeds a redstone signal to both of the Pistons on either side means that regardless of which way the melon grows the Pistons will push it the block will break and the melons will

Be carried away in the water stream down to this Hopper with the rain gone away we’re just going to make sure that the rest of these stalks have grown to their full height and from this point on they should only be able to produce melons and nothing else is going to change the

State of the stalk so if we hang around this farm for long enough occasionally you’ll find that a melon grows and a piston pushes it and the melon slices will end up going into the hopper and one of the other great Parts about this

Is that if we place a row of dirt over the top of where these melon stalks are we can build a second module of the farm two blocks above the first in this case we could even use this one for pumpkins and we don’t need to worry too much

About the hydration aspect here because as I mentioned once these are planted they should grow perfectly normally the only thing that changes is the growth rate of the stalk not the growth rate of the produce the Farmland is not going to revert back into dirt while it still has

A crop growing on it so these are perfectly safe although I will need to get a few more pumpkin seeds there we go so that I can plant out the second row then this next set of observers is going to detect the pumpkin stalks here and

There we go it seems like one of our melons has just been harvested let’s check the hopper down here yep there we go we got six melon slices since unfortunately it’s not possible to harvest a melon in its entirety unless you’re using a silk touch tool and farming them manually but obviously with

Pumpkins that works a little bit differently because it’s only the solid pumpkin that gets harvested there are no pumpkin slices in the game so don’t have to worry about that it seems like the farm is ramping up though we have a few more melon slices in here and you’ll

Occasionally find that some melons Linger on these dirt blocks the Pistons don’t push them all the way into the water stream but thankfully that is relatively rare we’ve already got a pumpkin before I’ve even set up the Redstone for the layer below but all we really need to do is make sure that

There are blocks in between each of these blocks attached to the backs of The Observers we’ll place our Redstone Dust inside of here we’ll just remove the block here so that’ll activate that piston manually and the Pumpkin will just fall into the water stream so it can be collected by the

Same Hopper we’ll bring these blocks up here as well so the pumpkins don’t end up jumping off onto the sides of the farm and falling out instead of going into the water stream but what you’ve ended up with here is a fairly Compact and fairly productive dual melon and

Pumpkin farm this is a fairly consistent and fairly productive Ive Farm you can tile it vertically as high as you want so you can produce lots of different layers of pumpkins and melons or you can build multiples of these to increase the output it’s fairly light on Redstone

Components of course you will need an observer for each stalk of the plant and a piston for each empty patch where the melan or pumpkin is going to grow But ultimately between that and the Redstone Dust this isn’t a super expensive Farm leave this running in the background

While you attend to some other work around your base and you’ll come back to find that there is a bunch of stuff waiting for you in the hopper or whatever series of collection chests you have set up but simple though this Farm is it has a few floors which our next

Iteration of the farm is going to address because the melons and pumpkins in this Farm only have one space on which they can grow in fact on average they actually have slightly less than one space on which they can grow because the space they’re trying to grow into

Could in that same Split Second also be occupied by another melon or pumpkin or the Piston head ejecting it from the ground that it’s growing on and so occasionally while it’s not something you’d really be able to observe about this Farm you might end up with some

Pumpkins not being able to grow because they are blocked by whatever is growing around them and I guess the pumpkin in the middle does have the choice of whether to grow to the left or to the right but obviously the ones on the ends only have one space in which they can

Grow and so that doesn’t necessarily make for a super productive Farm if you take a look at normal melon and pumpkin mechanics if we plant some melon seeds here for example a melon stalk that is grown on here can choose to grow a melon on any of these four blocks as we

Mentioned earlier but if those spaces are taken away from it it doesn’t just always grow a melon here it will still attempt to grow melons on any of the other three adjacent blocks and those growth attempts will simply fail it won’t reject those locations before choosing to grow on here it simply won’t

Grow a melon that time and then it will wait for the next opportunity to grow in order to decide whether or not it’s going to place a block here so basically this has a one in4 chance of growing a melon on any of the chances that the

Game would give it so a farm design in which all four sides of the melon or pumpkin stalk are open is going to maximize the amount that that plant can grow and therefore generate more melons or pumpkins in a shorter amount of time and that is the general theory behind

This next Farm we’re about to build this Farm design is a series of modules starting with an observer facing downwards over the top of this pumpkin stalk to once again detect when it changes shape when it connects to one of the fruit or vegetables that it is

Growing around it a series of Pistons are attached to this Observer facing downwards around the outside so that whichever block it chooses to grow the melon onto in this case it’s going to be harvested using a piston on top of the Observer here we’re going to place a

Single redstone dust and next to the Redstone Dust we’re going to place four solid blocks around the outside so now we have four pistons in the mix in instead of just one which makes this a little more expensive but you end up with the melon being able to grow on any

Of those four blocks and as soon as it does the Piston will fire it’ll harvest the melon and the melon will be able to be collected by some sort of collection mechanism which we’ll deal with in a second and naturally in this type of farm we’re trying to maximize the amount

Of space that melons and pumpkins have to grow and so it makes sense that much like our manual sugarcane farm that we built in an earlier episode we’re going to set up the next melon or pumpkin stalk right here a couple couple of blocks away in fact it’s kind of like

How a knight moves in chess it’s one block diagonally and one block straight so naturally our next Observer is going to go face down Above This stalk and we’re going to have some Pistons placed around the outside of this one as well we’re going to put one there one there

One there and one here and we end up with this kind of pin wheel style Farm where to briefly demonstrate by bone mealing the stalk every time The Observers activate all four of those Pistons are going to fire making sure that the melon is harvested no matter

Which block it ended up on now it’s worth noting that if you’re using this guide to play on an earlier version say you’re using a modded version of Minecraft you’ll probably have other ways to farm melons and pumpkins in your modded instance anyway but just to keep people aware if you’re playing an

Earlier version there are some versions in which melons or pumpkins could not grow if they had a solid block above them so for example this area of the farm back here which as you can see now is starting to potentially lose some of these items because they’ve Fallen onto

Areas that they cannot fall into the water stream on some earlier versions of the game the melons on this layer simply would not be able to grow because they have a dirt block directly above them so you’d have to build the next row of this Farm one block higher up and so setups

Like this wouldn’t really be viable because you have Pistons over each of the areas where the melon can grow but as you can see that farmed itself while it was in the background and we picked up a few more melon slices the last element of this design

Of course is how we end up collecting the melon and pumpkin slices especially as the farm expands and it becomes inly difficult for the player to just get in and pick these up manually of course they need some way to be collected automatically and here we actually have

A couple of options the more conventional option for these Farms which have been around for a little while is to Simply dig out a layer below this and add in a hopper Minecart collection mechanism all that requires is a hopper mine cart moving along on some powered rails underneath every

Block on which the melons or pumpkins could fall and the hopper mine cart will suck the melons and pumpkins through those blocks collect them all up and drop them off in a collection chest in a similar way to how we have our cave spider string Farm set up but now that

Mud blocks are in the game we have another alternative because as I mentioned earlier mud blocks have a slightly different Collision than their outward appearance might suggest and if we step onto this mud block you can see that we’re actually a slight fraction of a block lower than we would be if we’re

Standing on the grass we go from 93 to 92.8 75 in fact if you place some mud blocks side by side with some Farmland there will be a visual difference but there won’t actually be any kind of height increase or decrease between the mud and the Farmland like there is if

You walk up onto the side of a grass block and the significant Point here is that both mud and farmland having a lower hitbox than a full block can allow for items to be collected through them by Hoppers so you don’t need to invest in a constantly moving Hopper Minecart

Rail if you can simply throw the items onto the ground and have them collected by a tray of Hoppers below that of course assumes that Hoppers are not super expensive for you and of course we have an iron farm at this point but in some worlds it may actually be slightly

Cheaper for you to use a setup of a single Hopper mine cart which is only really an investment of 10 iron and a handful of rails and powered rails that will just keep that mine cart collecting non-stop so the collection mechanism is generally up to you and I think just to

Save on the amount of Hoppers we would end up crafting that’s a lot of iron and a lot of wood I think we’re going to go with the hopper Minecart route but just so you know both methods are perfectly viable the other thing to consider is

Spacing if space is a concern for you and you want this Farm to feel a little bit more uniform then you could always move these one block closer and simply have the melons and pumpkins growing on a diagonal from each other each fruit is still going to have four blocks on which

To grow so the growth attempts aren’t going to be blocked by other stuff growing near it all of the time and so it’s probably a slightly more efficient use of the space and could potentially lead to a farm with more plants in it and therefore more productivity if you

Just put them in a checkerboard and allow allow the blocks on the diagonals to collect for you if we move this melon stalk to this point here they’re sharing these two blocks on the diagonal and this set here would obviously share two blocks with the diagonal with the melon

That was growing there each of these would need an observer but it of course allows them to share pistons and you know therefore it would end up with the farm still being fairly productive so we’re actually going to take this melon pumpkin farm down at this point it has

Produced a pretty decent amount of melon slices and pumpkins so we can turn all of those into seeds that will populate our next little farm and I believe if we break some of the stalks here we should end up with a few melons and pumpkin seeds back and you can also consider

Alternating between melons and pumpkins in a farm design like this growing them on adjacent rows to each other but I’m not sure how much of a positive effect that would have on melon and pumpkin production it’s been a while since I did any testing on that subject and the

Explanations online are mostly kind of unclear but I think what actually happens if you grow melons and pumpkins side by side is that the stalks would grow faster but the fruit themselves would not cuz that’s the way it works with every other type of plant right if you’re growing beets and carrots and

Potatoes next to each other then that crop rotation effect is supposed to make sense but in the case of each of those you are harvesting the thing that’s growing whereas in this case the thing that’s growing is the stalk and the fruit is produced as almost like a

Byproduct anyway we don’t need to worry too much about that one thing we do need to worry about though is light levels since melons and pumpkins both need a certain amount of light in order to grow so we’re actually going to be turning one of the pumpkins into into a Jacko

Lantern which is going to give us enough light to light up the entire Farm they’ll need a light level of at least nine in order to grow and that can compensate for the fact that throughout this Farm there’s going to be a bit of a dark area because pistons and observers

And whatnot have to be placed above the fruit so I’m going to spend a bit of time building out a flat area from this hill here actually so that the output of our melon and pumpkin farm can be really close to the sugarcane Cactus and bamboo that we’ve got growing elsewhere I’m

Going to spend a bit more time preparing this area and when we come back we’ll build our final melon and pumpkin farm together hey folks welcome back so we’re going to construct the farm the first thing we’re going to do is lay down an area where the hopper mine cart is going

To travel and it’s always good practice to place your Redstone components on some sort of nonnal block to make sure that you don’t dig into these if you’re terraforming or caving in the area later so we’re going to use these blocks of polished and aight for that just to

Provide a nice clean floor naturally along each of the straight sections here we’re going to have powered rail running and that’s going to require us to put down some Redstone power sources to make sure that the rails can keep going we’ll use blocks of redstone in this case

Since we’ve got enough of them at each end we’re going to have the regular rails turn the corner for us and continue into another strip of pow Rail and we need to make just one more set of pow rails so that we can have enough to complete the whole thing we’re also

Going to aim to make this look slightly prettier from the outside in a second or two but remember that the mine cart is going to need a block to bounce off right here at the end with some powered joining that and that’ll send it back on the return trip now we’re going

To do something a little bit new and different over here because we’re going to have the collection mechanism here in the hillside we’re going to make sure that our Hopper outputs onto a neighboring block so that we can have a nice big double chest here and potentially a larger storage system

Since melons and pumpkins will add up quite quickly I’m thinking we just do a layer of double chests like this alternating so that the Hoppers can connect them up like so and then we’ll just get whatever we want out of the bottom chest but then the trick here is

We’re going to build up a circuit that’s going to switch off the powered rail that Returns the Harper mine cart and keeps it collecting stuff for the system once it’s finished emptying its content into this Hopper and for that we’ll need a couple of extra Redstone components we’ll just need one repeater one

Comparator a redstone torch and a piece of redstone dust along with the powered rails that we’re already working with we’ll place a regular rail here to isolate this from the connected strip of powered rail there and we need some sort of block on this side for the powered

Rail to ramp up onto so we’re going to place one powered rail here one on the top there and you’ll notice this changes the shape of that rail but when we remove this rail the shape stay stays the way it is and we’re going to make

Sure that this block here can return the hopper mine cart by placing it there but this angled rail is actually going to do a lot of work for us a comparator here is going to detect whether or not this Hopper has any contents beyond that we’re going to place a repeater to boost

The signal so regardless of what the comparator is outputting the signal is going to be very strong going into this block here that block there is actually going to have a redstone dust on it like so that’s going to be trans mitting signal back to this block here and that

Block is going to have a redstone torch on it normally when there are no contents in this Hopper the redstone torch will be on allowing this rail to be powered and sending the minecart off on its way but when this Hopper has contents I.E when the hopper mine cart

Has returned and is draining into the storage system the rail switches off thanks to this comparator activating that repeater activating the redstone dust and powering the block that the redstone torch is attached to that should be fast enough that it freezes the hopper mine cart in place the angle

Over the top here will still allow it to collide with the hopper meaning that the hopper can drain its contents and once the hopper mine cart is empty again it will be sent back off on its way the circuit reactivates and everything goes back to collection mode naturally that’s

Going to limit our ability to collect from this top chest but the whole point is that the other items are going to filter down through the next three chests and if we need more than three double chests of melons and pumpkins then I think we can probably rearrange

This storage system now our next task is to build out the floor that’s actually going to be growing the melons and pumpkins and the one thing we need to make sure of is that we leave a gap over the top of here because the mine cart

Won’t be able to make it up onto this powered Rail and start to return if there is a solid block above this so we’re going to have to emit this corner of the farm I’m also going to emit the opposite corner because there’s no way the mine cart can collect from that

Space so we can build those up into wooden pillars or something like that that’s going to make the farm look a bit more supported and natural maybe we’ll do the same on the opposite two corners as well for the sake of symmetry but this dirt floor is what’s going to be

Growing all of the produce within the farm so at this point we’re going to grab a bunch of seeds from our melons and pumpkins and since this is a smaller footprint of the farm we are just going to check aboard this I think we’ll do one diagonal stripe of melons we’ll

Leave a gap and we’ll do one diagonal stripe of pumpkins and once again remember that these don’t actually need hydration beyond the stage where the stalk is growing so we don’t need to worry about leaving a water source in here we do need to make sure that the

Area is lit up though we’re going to build a glass wall around the outside of this so that we can see into the farm and make sure everything’s working okay so Skylight should compensate for most of that but in the center of the farm here more or less we are going to be

Placing one Jacko Lantern that’s going to be able to light the crops in the surrounding area and now before we do anything else we’re going to grow up all of these stalks so that they are fully grown and some melons and pumpkins May grow throughout this process but don’t

Worry about that we’ll deal with those in a second the next part is the expensive part because we need to place an observer facing downwards over every pumpkin and melon stalk and now I’m going to use elytra you can use a trapo door as well to force myself into

Crawling mode so that we can crawl around and place Pistons facing down above every block that is now open to the sky when you’re done with that the top of your farm should look like this you need to place a redstone dust on the top of every Observer and on top of

Every piston you will need to place a solid block and at this point you should be able to look into the farm and see any of the pumpkins or melons that have already grown and you should be able to smack those with an ax just to make sure

That they’re removed and from that point onwards anything that’s growing inside the farm should be automat ically harvested using these Pistons then we just need to craft a hopper mine cart to collect some of that stuff and we can get the collection mechanism up and running we’ll pop that on the powered

Rail here that should go down into the farm it’s collecting all of the melons and pumpkins that have landed on the surface and once it returns which it should do in just a second yep there we go it’ll automatically stall on top of this Hopper the items inside will be

Drained out by the system and once it’s finished draining those items this redstone torch will reactivate and the hopper mine cart continues on its way collecting so that is now a farm that will be around our base harvesting melons and pumpkins for us constantly in the background and that will give us a

Plentiful Supply to trade with farmer villagers if we want to we’ve already got a bunch of stuff down here in this chest I’m going to add what I brought from the previous Farms into there as well and from this point we can focus on just making the farm look pretty I think

Having a chassis of spruce wood is going to make sense we can also run the Spruce Wood up the four corners of the farm like so we can also have the Spruce Wood run up safely from all four corners of the f Farm to conceal the hover mine

Cart and make sure that nothing gets in there and messes with it obviously we need to leave this corner a bit more open but we can build up some blocks around it to make sure that that’s not visible we can build a frame out of spruce wood like so to conceal the

Minecart collection area and since melons and pumpkins are both solid blocks we can actually build out this lower wall with them to decorate the farm and give some more hints as to its purpose I think we’ll have the pumpkins on this side next to the collection area

And a solid wall of watermelons on this side then I’ll go get some glass to make sure this area is enclosed cuz I have already noticed a couple of melons and pumpkins popping out the sides when the Pistons break them and maybe in keeping with the theme we can do orange glass on

One half and Green Glass on the other half and I think on a stream this week we’ll build out a roof for this thing so it looks a little bit more like a house even though obviously the colors and the construction of it aren’t quite entirely

Housel likee it is a house that is producing melons and pumpkins for us and that’s the most important thing now of course melons are going to not quite be one for one the way pumpkins are because they break down into slices and you don’t get as many slices as you would

Need to create a full melon but at least they will start to build up in here and I’ve just been using the ones that I’ve been getting to finish decorating this wall here but we also have the option of using those melon slices in potion brewing to brew ourselves some health

Potions we can use the pumpkins as Jacko lanterns for lighting or wear carved pumpkins on our heads to protect us from Enderman there’s whole variety of things that we can do with those ingredients Beyond just trading them to the farmer which is really my main Port of Call at

This point anyway but I think that is where we’re going to wrap things up for this episode of the Minecraft Survival Guide folks I hope you’ve enjoyed taking a look at a slightly more technical but very colorful and fun build that’s going to be very useful for your villager

Trading Enterprises among other things thank you so much for watching the Minecraft Survival Guide my name has been pixel riffs don’t forget to leave a like on this video If you enjoyed it subscribe if you want to see more and I’ll see you folks soon take care bye for now