Bone meal in Minecraft: Crafting recipes, uses, and more

Minecraft items are incredibly vast and varied, but bone meal may be one of the most useful among them. Obtained by breaking down bones and bone blocks, killing fish (in Java Edition), emptying composter blocks, and trading with the Wandering Trader, bone meal has a multitude of applications. In addition to its direct uses, this material is also a core component in many crafting recipes.

It never hurts to have some bone meal nearby wherever you are traveling or setting up a home. Even if you don't need it immediately, this resource's versatility means it will be helpful sooner rather than later.

Those who are curious about bone meal will want to learn about its uses and applications. Here's everything you need to know about this fantastic item.

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All you need to know about bone meal in Minecraft 1.20

Once you have bone meal in Minecraft, you've opened a considerably large door of possibilities. From growing plant life to creating dyes or patterns for banners, bone meal can do it all. However, newer or returning players may not be familiar with the full scope of this magnificent resource.

Crafting recipes using bone meal

• Bone Blocks - Nine bone meal in a filled crafting table.
• White Dye - One bone meal piece in a crafting table.

Dye crafting recipes (Bedrock/Education Edition only)

• Gray - Ink sac/black dye + bone meal
• Light Blue - Lapis lazuli/blue dye + bone meal
• Lime - Green dye + bone meal
• Magenta - Lapis lazuli/blue dye + red dye + bone meal
• Pink - Red dye + bone meal

Bedrock/Education Edition exclusive crafting recipes

• White Balloons - Six latex + lead + bone meal + Helium
• White Beds - Any bed + bone meal
• White Concrete Powder - Four sand + four gravel + bone meal
• White Firework Stars - Gunpowder + bone meal + head/gold nugget/fire charge/feather + glowstone dust + diamond
• White Glow Sticks - Six Polyethylene + Luminol + bone meal + Hydrogen Peroxide
• White Shulker Boxes - Any shulker box + bone meal
• White Stained Glass - Eight glass blocks + bone meal
• White Stained Glass Panes - Eight glass panes + bone meal
• White Terracotta - Eight terracotta blocks + bone meal
• White Wool - Any wool block + bone meal

Furthermore, Minecraft players in Java and Bedrock Edition can combine bone meal with banners in a crafting table to create a white banner pattern. Adding items such as vines, creeper heads, or Enchanted Golden Apples can also allow you to place white designs on their banner.

Furthermore, in the loom block, you an combine a banner, bone meal, and a banner pattern to create various designs on your banner beyond what can be accomplished by simply using the crafting table.

In Minecraft's Bedrock and Education Editions, bone meal serves as an alternative to white dye in many respects. This helps you perform certain tasks without having white dye in your inventory, including the functions listed above, dying sheep wool, cat/wolf collars, and changing the text color of signs and hanging signs.

While all of these are certainly useful, one of the most central functions of bone meal in Minecraft is to use it directly on plant life. Doing so speeds up the growth stages of just about any plant or crop in the game. However, bone meal won't have any effect on cacti, vines, nether wart, sugar cane (in Java Edition), and chorus plants.

On top of being able to speed up plant growth, bone meal can also be used on grass, flowers, and pink petals to create new plant life in a set area in Minecraft. The plants and flowers that are generated as a result depend on the biome where the bone meal is applied.

Bone meal's Minecraft applications in this regard also apply to plant life that doesn't exist on the plain ground of the Overworld. You can use bone meal to create seagrass underwater, increase the number of sea pickles on a coral block or coral fans in warm ocean biomes.

Furthermore, bone meal can be applied to netherrack to convert it to nylium, but this will only work if the netherrack block in question is adjacent to a nylium block. Applying bone meal directly to the nylium allows it to grow both crimson and warped fungus, and placing the bone meal on the side of a nylium block will create nether sprouts and twisting vines.

All things considered, bone meal is an indispensable tool for you to use. Even better, farming it is incredibly easy compared to other resources, making it easy to stockpile and dispense at a player's convenience.