How to make trees grow faster in Minecraft 1.19 update

One of the first building materials many Minecraft players will get access to is wood, both in the form of logs and planks. Due to the many different types of wood, each with a unique color of plank and style of door, there are numerous ways in which players can incorporate these blocks into their builds.

With the addition of the new blood red mangrove wood in 1.19 The Wild Update, players might want to include more of it in their builds, though this can be a slow process when waiting for trees to grow naturally. But thankfully, there is a way in vanilla Minecraft to get trees to grow faster.

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The only way to speed up tree growth in vanilla Minecraft 1.19

Bone meal

The particle effect after using bone meal on a sapling (Image via Minecraft)

While there is no visual difference between them, saplings have 3-4 different growth stages. There is the initial stage when they are first planted, then two intermediate growth stages, and then they will turn into full sized trees in the fourth growth stage.

Each bone meal used on a sapling has a 45% chance to increase its growth stage. If it is obstructed and cannot grow into a full tree, the bone meal will still be consumed, though it will be entirely wasted as the tree will be unable to grow.

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What else bone meal can be used for

What it looks like to use bone meal on wheat (Image via Minecraft)

Bone meal has several other uses outside of causing saplings to grow into full-size trees. The most obvious use, due to its ability to cause trees to grow, is its similar feature to cause crops to grow faster as well.

Most crops can be forcibly progressed to their final growth stage by using two or three bone meal, which will then allow players to harvest them.

Additionally, bone meal can be used as white dye on the Bedrock and Education editions of Minecraft, while Java edition players can use bone meal to craft white dye.

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How to make bone meal

A composter found in a village as part of a farm (Image via Minecraft)

Bone meal can be crafted by using bones. There is no true recipe for this crafting, as it simply requires a single bone. When a bone is placed into either the player’s inventory crafting section or a crafting table, they will be able to craft three bone meal.

There is a station in the game that allows players to turn unwanted plant materials into bone meal, which can help players quickly harvest other plants. This is the composter. Made entirely from slabs and serving as the job site for villager farmers, many of the game's food and plant items can be placed into it, each with their own chance of progression. When filled, it will give players one bone meal.

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How to get bones and bone meal

A wandering trader without their iconic llamas (Image via Minecraft)

The most obvious way to get bone meal is by crafting it with a bone. This makes skeletons an obvious source of bone meal, making their dungeons useful for players who want to do a lot of fast farming. General mob farms can also help players get bones quickly.

There is kind of a strange and exclusive method that users can opt for to get bone meal. All of the game’s variants of fish - cod, salmon, tropical fish, and pufferfish - have a five percent chance of dropping one bone meal on death. For Bedrock players, they will instead drop one bone, which can be turned into three bonemeal. The difference is minor, but quite strange.

There is another method for getting bone meal, though this one is exclusive to the Bedrock edition of the game. This is the Wandering Trader that sometimes appears with their two llamas. They have a chance to offer a trade of three bone meal for a single emerald.