Sugar Cane is a very useful crop in Minecraft. It can be used to craft Paper, which can be used to make Maps or Bookshelves, and it can be used to craft Sugar to then make Fireworks (which you can shoot to your enemies using a Crossbow).
It is easy to find and easy to farm, but sometimes players notice that it can take a while to grow, more than it should (meaning: more than what the Wiki says). So it is very easy to find in many forums a post titled “how long does it take for sugarcane to grow in minecraft?”.
In this article you’ll see the exact speed, why sometimes it looks like it’s growing slower and how to speed up the process.
How much time does it take?
Sugar Cane grows to a speed of 1 block every 16 random ticks. This means that on average it will grow 1 block every 8 minutes, taking also in account the effects of light level and the terrain it is planted on.
Why it can grow slower
If you think that your Sugar Cane is not growing as fast as it should, it is probably because you have been travelling. Sugar Cane will grow only if the player is around, which means that you need to stay in the same chunk. That’s the only reason why it could grow “slowly”.
How it can grow faster
There are two ways to speed the growth. By using Bone Meal and by increasing the random tick speed through the commands.
- The Bone Meal will instantly increase the Sugar Cane to the maximum of 3 blocks high. It doesn’t affect Sugar Cane in the Java edition though, so this method will only work in the Bedrock edition.
- If you want to increase the random tick speed rate you’ll have to use the commands and change it from 3 (the default random tick speed) to a higher value.
For example, for setting the speed to 1000, you’ll need to type: /gamerule randomTickSpeed 1000.
This method works for making anything grow faster, even animals like Turtles for example.
You can also set the Random Tick Speed to 0 to make everything stop from growing. It is one of the 4 ways to freeze time in Minecraft.
Making an automated farm
Harvesting Sugar Cane is very simple and also quite satisfying, but it can take up some time.
If you want to take your Sugar Farm to the next level you will wanna try to build an automated Sugar Farm that will do all the hard work for you. Explaining how to do it in this article would be very long and tedious to follow, so I think it’s best if I show you this very well done video about the topic. Enjoy!
