Minecraft Crop Growth Calculator
Editions: Java (Bedrock random-tick rate differs — see FAQ) · Verified: Java 26.3 · 2026-09-19
Crops have no timer. A plant advances one stage only when a random tick lands on its block and a roll succeeds, and the roll is decided by the farmland around it. Set your field below to get the points, the roll, the average time to harvest, and the time by which four fifths of the field is done — which is the number an automatic farm's clock actually wants.
Your field
The same crop, four layouts
One 9×9 plot, 81 tiles, planted four ways. Time is per plant; the last column is the whole plot's output, so it rewards density as well as speed.
The worked example
The standard starter farm is a 9×9 of farmland with the centre block dug out for water, which keeps all 80 remaining tiles moist. A wheat plant in the middle of it sits on moist farmland with eight moist neighbours: 1 base, 3 for the tile under it, and 0.75 for each of the eight around it, which is 10 points, the maximum. Ten points roll 1 in 3 per random tick, a random tick lands on a given block every 68.27 seconds on average, so one growth advance takes 204.8 seconds and the seven advances from seed to harvest take 23 min 54 s.
Plant that same plot solid instead of in rows and every plant has the same crop on its diagonals, which halves the points to 5 and the roll to 1 in 6: 47 min 47 s a plant. Density nearly rescues it — 81 plants at half speed produce 102 harvests an hour against 113 from the 45 plants in rows — but rows win on both counts, which is why they are the standard. Forget the water entirely and a row plant drops to 4 points, a roll of 1 in 7, and 55 min 45 s. Beetroot escapes all of it on stage count alone: three advances instead of seven, 10 min 14 s in the same moist rows.
The floor in the formula pays for a detail builders argue about. Dropping one or two of a plant's eight farmland neighbours — the water hole itself, a torch base, a path — costs nothing at all, because 10, 9.25 and 8.50 points all floor to the same 1 in 3. The third missing neighbour is where it starts to hurt: 7.75 points, 1 in 4, 31 min 51 s.
What the surrounding farmland is worth
The crop's own tile is moist or dry in each column; the row counts how many of the eight blocks around it are farmland of the same kind. No crowding penalty in either column.
| Farmland neighbours | Chance per random tick (moist) | Chance per random tick (dry) |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 14.29% | 7.69% |
| 1 | 16.67% | 8.33% |
| 2 | 20.00% | 9.09% |
| 3 | 20.00% | 10.00% |
| 4 | 25.00% | 11.11% |
| 5 | 25.00% | 12.50% |
| 6 | 33.33% | 12.50% |
| 7 | 33.33% | 14.29% |
| 8 | 33.33% | 14.29% |
Other plants, other clocks
Not everything grown from a seed runs on growth points. These four ignore farmland and hydration entirely and roll a flat chance per random tick, so they are listed rather than calculated above.
| Plant | Chance per random tick | Advances | Average, planted to ready |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nether wart | 10% | 3 | 34 min 08 s |
| Cocoa pod | 20% | 2 | 11 min 23 s |
| Sweet berry bush | 20% | 3 | 17 min 04 s |
| Bamboo, one block | 33.33% | 1 | 3 min 25 s |
The points rule, the 1/(floor(25/points) + 1) roll, the stage counts and the per-random-tick table come from the Minecraft Wiki's crop farming tutorial, with hydration from its farmland page and the 4,096-block subchunk and default random tick speed from its tick page, all read 2026-09-19. Every constant was checked the same day against the crop growth calculator at minecraftmaps.com/tools/crop-growth-calculator, which publishes the same points, the same rolls and the same times. The four plants in the second table are from the wiki's nether wart page and its neighbours. The crop growth guide shows the working.
Questions builders actually ask
How long does wheat take to grow in Minecraft?
On moist farmland planted in rows, 23 min 54 s on average from seed to harvest in Java at the default random tick speed. That is an average over many plants rather than a timer: half are done by 22 min 46 s, and a fifth are still growing at 30 min 59 s. The same wheat in a solid field takes 47 min 47 s a plant, because crowding halves its growth points.
Do crops really grow faster in rows than in a solid field?
Yes, twice as fast per plant. The game halves a crop's growth points when the same crop sits on any diagonal, or on both the north-south and the east-west axis. Alternating rows avoid that; a solid field and a checkerboard both take the halving. Rows also win on total output from a 9x9 plot, 113 harvests an hour against 102, even though they hold 45 plants rather than 81.
Does a torch or a water hole in the middle of a field slow the crops beside it?
Not if it costs a plant no more than two of its eight farmland neighbours. Ten points and 8.50 points both roll 1 in 3, because the formula floors 25 divided by the points before adding one. The third missing neighbour is the one that costs: 7.75 points drops the roll to 1 in 4 and pushes wheat out to 31 min 51 s.
How many harvests an hour does one plant give?
For a seven-advance crop it is 7.533 times the growth chance, so 2.51 an hour at the best roll of 1 in 3 and 1.26 in a solid field. The Minecraft Wiki's crop farming tutorial prints 6.591 times the chance, which is the same arithmetic carried out for eight advances; wheat makes seven, from age 0 to age 7, as that tutorial states two sections earlier.
Do Java and Bedrock grow crops at the same speed?
The points, the roll and the stage counts are shared; the clock is not. Bedrock's random tick speed defaults to 1 rather than 3, which the Minecraft Wiki gives as an average of 204.8 seconds between random ticks on a block against Java's 68.27, so crops there take roughly three times as long. Only one of this page's two sources covers Bedrock, so the tool computes Java and states the difference here.