How to Grow Melons and Pumpkins in Minecraft PE
Three articles in and you should have an idea of how to start both basic and multi-crop farms. In the previous article, I talked about how you can grow wheat, beetroot, carrots, and potatoes in a single farm to maximize efficiency.
In this article, we’re going to be talking about a different set of crops. Most people tend to stay away from farming melons and pumpkins because of how difficult they are to come by at times. However, you might want to learn how to effectively plant these crops especially when you’re playing on survival.
Getting Started
So what are the things you need to start growing melons and pumpkins? If you’ve read my previous posts, a basic melon and pumpkin farm has the same water and light requirements as wheat and beetroot. If you’re just starting a game on survival mode make sure to collect enough wood to make a crafting table, wooden slabs, as well as wooden pickaxes, axes, and hoes.
Using a hoe, you’ll need to till the ground until you end up with a 9 by 9 block farm area. Don’t forget to dig a hole in the center of this area. This will be where we place the water that is vital for our crop’s growth. As you might have noticed, the current farm looks an awful lot like the basic farm I detailed in my second post.
Well, the similarities actually stop here since we can’t just plant our melon or pumpkin seeds anywhere inside this farm (more on this later). If you grow both melons and pumpkins together, you can set up a 19 x 9 block (two 9 x 9 farms divided by a row of oak slabs or torches).
Where Do You Get Melon and Pumpkin Seeds?
If you want to farm melons and pumpkins easily then you’ll need to use a jungle and/or village seed. In my experience, melons are a lot easier to come across than pumpkins.
There are also times that you’ll see both of them growing together side-by-side resulting in the melon getting glitched. It will retain its color but will have the distinctive face of a pumpkin. In these instances, the melon will not give you any seeds and should be destroyed (you can use an axe or sword for this).
Larger concentrations of melons can be found in the jungle biomes while you’ll come across pumpkins in any area where there’s grass. There’s also a chance that you’ll come across melon and pumpkin seeds in mine carts with chests which are usually found in abandoned mineshafts.
Take note that breaking melons won’t give you melon seeds. Instead you’ll have to convert the melons to melon seeds (1:1 ratio) using a crafting table.
On to Planting
Now that you’ve come across the pumpkin and melon seeds, it’s time to start planting.
I mentioned earlier that you shouldn’t just plant the seeds indiscriminately in the farm area. There are some land efficient layouts that can be used for planting melons or pumpkins in a basic farm. What is land efficiency? It is basically about getting as much crops as possbile using a fixed amount of space.
Now, I’m going to detail two of the easiest to maintain of these layouts. Each of these layouts require 4 rows of melon/pumpkin crops together with a row of stone/oak slabs or other crops(wheat beetroot) that will have our water source at its center.
For the first layout, you’ll need to plant the melons/pumpkins on the 2nd and 3rd as well as 7th and 8th rows (or columns depending on where you’re looking) of the basic farm.
The second layout is the direct opposite of the first. In this layout, you will need to plant your melon/pumpkin seeds on the 1st, 4th, 6th, and 9th rows instead.
Unlike wheat which can be harvested at any time throughout the course of its growth stages, the only time you’ll be able to harvest melon and pumpkins is when they’re at the final/8th stage of their growth. This is characterized by the appearance of the fruits in the adjacent blocks where you planted the melon or pumpkin seeds (refer to above and below screen shots).
How Efficient Are These Layouts?
To be honest, the two layouts I detailed aren’t the most efficient but they will get the job done. According to several Minecraft wikis/guides, the efficiency of either of the two layouts is rated at 44.44% (meaning in a 9×9 plot, 44.44% of the land will be used for growing melons or pumpkins) . In contrast, the most efficient of the four known layouts is rated at 48.88%. However, to achieve this efficiency, you’ll need to expand the area of your basic farm from 9×9 blocks to 9×10.
In my opinion, the 4.44% difference won’t be that big of an issue if you’re still starting out or even if you’ve invested a lot of time in the game.
In the event that you really wanted to increase the farm’s planting and harvesting efficiency then you might want to consider stackable, advanced, or semi-automatic solutions instead (which we’ll talk about in later posts).
Have you tried out the layouts I mentioned above on your melon or pumpkin farm? If yes then we’d like to hear your thoughts about these on the comments section below!