How to Make Grass Grow

Building in Minecraft can sometimes be tricky if you don't understand the mechanics of a particular block, including grass blocks. For example, you cannot simply dig up grass blocks with a regular tool, you will be left with dirt blocks. There are however a few different methods you can use to pick up grass blocks and grow grass in different areas.

Grass spreads along dirt blocks after some time and with proper lighting, you can also use Silk Touch to obtain grass blocks and place them wherever you'd like. This article will go through all the details you need to know about grass blocks and how to spread and grow grass.

How to get grass to grow on dirt

Grass will slowly spread to neighboring dirt blocks, and you can manipulate this to make grass grow in a new area. If you want to cover a new area with grass you can easily do so by using dirt blogs to connect the area to an existing grass block.

If you are bringing grass into a covered area, you will want to make sure the light level is high enough or the grass will not grow. You need to have at least a light level of 9, to increase the light level you need to place either torches, jack-o-lanterns, or lanterns in the immediate area.

If you are playing on the Java version it is very easy to check your light level, press F3 and a lot of various data will appear on screen. This will allow you to look at things such as your coordinates, the current biome, and details about the block you are pointing at. The F3 screen will tell the current light level of a certain block.

If you are playing on Bedrock unfortunately there is no way to pull up the same type of date screen to know if you have the right light level. You will have to get the area lit up as much as you can and wait and see if it spreads.

Grass spreading can take a very long time and you will want to go and do other things while you wait. You don't have to wait right next to the dirt blocks, but you don't want to go too far. You want make sure you are still in range of the chunk where the dirt blocks are so those blocks will stay loaded in the game.

How to get flowers and tall grass to grow

If you want to add some tall grass or flowers to your world you can easily do do so by using bone meal. You can craft bone meal with a single bone, you can kill skeletons and there is a chance they will drop a bone. A single bone will craft 3 bone meal.

Bone meal helps you grow crops such as wheat much faster. There are some other techniques you can use to grow your wheat faster too, you can learn more in this article.

If you are just starting out and don't have the equipment to successfully kill skeletons you can use a composter to create bone meal. Composters allow you to put food or seeds into them to convert it to bone meal.

Once you obtain some bone meal you can bone meal some existing grass blocks which will result in tall grass and some flowers that grow in that immediate area. This is especially helpful if you need flowers for dye or bees, or if you need to find some more wheat seeds.

If you want to learn more about bees you can check out my guide.

How to pick up grass blocks

If you go to pick up a grass block with any normal tool you will only get dirt blocks with no grass on top of that block when you go to place it back down. However, if you want to pick up the grass block as is, you will need to get silk touch on the tool you are using.

To get silk touch you will need an enchanting table, some lapis, and some xp levels. Silk touch is a level 30 enchantment meaning you will need a level 30 enchantment table and at least 30 xp levels. Enchantment table levels go up when you have bookshelves around the table, each bookshelf gives you enchantment table 2 levels, so you will need a total of 15 bookshelves around your enchantment table to reach level 30.

Once you have your bookshelves and xp levels in place you can use the enchantment table to enchant tools and add silk touch to a certain tool. You may have to enchant a few tools before your enchantment table offers you silk touch.

Once you get silk touch then any grass blocks you go to pick up grass blocks, rather than getting a dirt block you will receive a grass block.

How to grow grass underground

If you are trying to build an underground base and want to grow grass underground you will need to use the above silk touch method of removing grass blocks and plenty of dirt blocks and torches. You will want to have quite a few grass blocks to place first.

Once you have a good amount of grass in your cave you will want to make sure you place enough light for the grass to spread. Without proper lighting the existing grass will not spread to your dirt blocks. You also want to make sure you stay in the surrounding area so that chunk will stay loaded in and your grass will spread.