How to craft a composter in Minecraft – and how to use one

Make sure you’ve got wood!

By Joe Julians

Published: Thursday, 16 November 2023 at 11:48 AM

If you have green fingers from gardening in Minecraft then you’ll no doubt be familiar with all things horticultural in the game, but for those who aren’t – we’ve got how to craft a composter in Minecraft and how to use one explained.

While many of the gameplay loops in Minecraft are quite tricky, crafting a composter and using one is very easy, and can be done in a jiffy.

A composter takes plant and food material and turns it into bone meal, which you can take into your inventory and use as fertiliser for most types of plants and as an ingredient for dyes.

You could, of course, palm this off as a job for your villagers, but it’s nice to be in touch with digital nature and know exactly where your digital food is coming from.

And though composting in nature can take time, we won’t – so read on and all shall be revealed!

How to make a composter in Minecraft

To make a composter, you will need to place seven wooden slabs of any type in a U shape on a Crafting table. Here are the materials that you will need to gather including, the size of the crafting table you will need to use.

7 wooden slabs
3×3 crafting table

Now you will need to set them out in the crafting table in this order:

Place the seven bits of wood onto the grid around the outside so that they form a U shape.
The middle square should now be blank, along with the second box in the top row.
Once they are in there the composter should appear and all you need to do is to add it to your inventory.

Note: Composters can also spawn in all villages.

And that’s it, you have yourself a shiny new composter, but what can you do with it?

How to use a composter in Minecraft

The composter is used to create bone meal. For a full list of the items and whether you can add compost take a look at the Minecraft Gamepedia.

First of all, you need to decide where to put it, so find a good spot, aim the pointer at it and then select it from your inventory to place it. Once you have done that, you need to add a compostable item to it so it can do its thing and make you some bone meal. You will know when you have added some successfully as you will see green particles appear in the base of the composter.

You need to have seven layers in there to get to composting, so fill it up and, once you have done that, the bone meal will pop out of the composter and you can collect it. Then just add it to your inventory and job done!