Bone Meal

Bone meal is a material that can be used as a fertilizer for most plants and fungi, as well as a crafting ingredient for dyes.

Obtaining[]

Crafting[]

Ingredients	Crafting recipe
Bone	3
Bone Block	9

Mob loot[]

Fish[]

All fish mob variants (cod, salmon, tropical fish, and pufferfish) have a 5% chance to drop 1 bone meal upon death.‌^{[Java Edition only]} In Bedrock Edition, they drop bones instead.

Composters[]

When a composter is completely filled, a single bone meal drops the next time the composter is used.

Trading[]

Wandering traders sell 3 bone meal for an emerald.‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}

Usage[]

Crafting ingredient[]

Name	Ingredients	Crafting recipe	Description
Bone Block	Bone Meal
Gray Dye	Ink Sac or Black Dye + Bone Meal	2	‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]}
Light Blue Dye	Lapis Lazuli or Blue Dye + Bone Meal	2	‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]}
Lime Dye	Green Dye + Bone Meal	2	‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]}
Magenta Dye	Lapis Lazuli or Blue Dye + Red Dye + Bone Meal	4	‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]}
Pink Dye	Red Dye + Bone Meal	2	‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]}
White Balloon	Latex + Bone Meal + Helium + Lead		‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]}
White Bed	Any Bed + Bone Meal		‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]}
White Concrete Powder	Bone Meal + Sand + Gravel	8	‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]}
White Dye	Bone Meal
White Firework Star	Gunpowder + Bone Meal + Head or Gold Nugget or Feather or Fire Charge + Glowstone Dust + Diamond		‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]} Up to eight dyes can be added. One head, gold nugget, feather, or fire charge can be added. Both the diamond and the glowstone dust can be added with any of the other ingredients.
White Firework Star	White Firework Star + Bone Meal		‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]} Adds a "fade to color" effect to the firework star, overwriting any existing fades. Up to eight dyes can be added.
White Glow Stick	Polyethylene + Hydrogen Peroxide + Bone Meal + Luminol		‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]}
White Shulker Box	Any Shulker Box + Bone Meal		‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]}
White Stained Glass	Glass + Bone Meal	8	‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]}
White Stained Glass Pane	Glass Pane + Bone Meal	8	‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]}
White Terracotta	Terracotta + Bone Meal	8	‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]}
White Wool	Any Wool + Bone Meal		‌^{[Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education only]}

In Bedrock Edition, bone meal can be also used in banner patterns:

Name	Ingredients	Crafting recipe
White Banner pattern	Bone Meal + Banner
White Banner image	Bone Meal + Banner + Vines or Bricks or Creeper Head or Wither Skeleton Skull or Oxeye Daisy or Enchanted Golden Apple

Loom ingredient[]

Name	Ingredients	Loom recipe	Description
White Banner pattern	White Banner + Bone Meal		Field masoned banner and bordure indented banner don't require banner patterns.‌^{[Java Edition only]} Bone Meal can be used as a dye.‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]} Note: The loom is using the Java Edition interface.
White Banner image	White Banner + Bone Meal + Banner Pattern		Exceptions: Field masoned and bordure indented banner patterns.‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]} Bone Meal can be used as a dye.‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]} Note: The loom is using the Java Edition interface.

Dye[]

In Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education, bone meal can be:

Applied to sheep to dye their wool, which can then be sheared for 1–3 blocks of white wool.
Applied to tamed wolves to dye their collars.
Applied to tamed cats to dye their collars.
Used to dye or stain leather armor, beds, glass, terracotta and shulker boxes.
Combined with gunpowder to make a firework star.
Combined with a firework star to create a fade-to-color effect.
Used to add patterns to banners.
Used to dye shulkers in Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education.
Used to dye water contained in cauldrons in Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education.
Combined with sand and gravel to craft concrete powder.
Combined with compounds to craft balloons or glow sticks in Bedrock Edition and Minecraft Education.
Used to change the color of text on signs or hanging signs.

Fertilizer[]

Bone meal can also be used on the following plants to have a chance to increase their growth stage:


Plant	Action
Wheat Carrots Potatoes	The plant matures 2–5 growth stages.
Beetroots	The plant has a 75% chance of growing to the next growth stage.
Bamboo	Grows the bamboo by 1-2 stems.
Melon Seeds Pumpkin Seeds	The planted stem matures 2–5 growth stages. Bone meal affects only the stem's growth; it does not cause melons or pumpkins to sprout from a mature stem.
Saplings Azalea Flowering Azalea Mangrove Propagule (not hanging)	The sapling has a 45% chance of growing to the next growth stage, if possible. Saplings have two growth stages (with no visible difference between them) before growing into trees as the third stage. A tree cannot grow unless the sapling is planted in proper ground and sufficient space is available. Using bone meal on such an obstructed sapling with no chance of growing wastes the bone meal.
Sunflowers Lilacs Rose Bushes Peonies	The corresponding item form drops, without destroying the original plant.
Grass Ferns Seagrass	A one-block-high tall grass, fern, or seagrass (that is on grass block, dirt, coarse dirt, rooted dirt, farmland, podzol, mycelium, moss block, mud, or muddy mangrove roots (only exception is seagrass, will need to on a full surface)) grows into a two-block-high tall grass, fern or seagrass.
Mushrooms	Has a 40% chance of growing into a huge mushroom if on grass block, dirt, coarse dirt, rooted dirt, farmland, podzol, mycelium, moss block, mud, or muddy mangrove roots.
Cocoa	The cocoa plant matures 1 growth stage.
Sweet Berry Bush	Grows every stage.
Sea Pickle	If the sea pickle is on a coral block and in water at least 2 blocks deep, the sea pickle colony grows, and additional sea pickles generate nearby.
Sugar Cane‌^{[BE only]}	The sugar cane grows to maximum height (three blocks tall).
Kelp	The kelp plant grows by 1 block per bone meal used, up to its maximum height.
Flower (excluding wither roses)‌^{[BE only]}	One-block-high flowers make more flowers of the same type grow in the surrounding area.
Fungus	Grows into huge fungi, but only if on the respective nylium.
Weeping Vines	Grows the weeping vines a few blocks downward.
Twisting Vines	Grows the twisting vines a few blocks upward.
Cave Vines	Produces glow berries if the vine did not have any glow berries on it already.
Glow Lichen	The glow lichen spreads to a random adjacent block.
Moss Block	The moss block causes nearby stone, cave vines, and dirt to become moss blocks.
Big Dripleaf Small Dripleaf	A big dripleaf grows one block higher, and a small dripleaf becomes a big dripleaf.
Rooted Dirt	Causes hanging roots to grow underneath the rooted dirt if there is space.
Mangrove Leaves	Creates a hanging mangrove propagule under the mangrove leaves.
Mangrove Propagule (hanging)	The mangrove propagule matures 1 growth age.
Pink Petals	Produces another pink petal in the block. If there are already four pink petals in the block, it will drop a pink petal as an item.
Torchflower Crop Pitcher Crop	Grows every stage.

Bone meal does not affect:

Cactus
Vines
Nether wart
Sugar cane‌^{[Java Edition only]}
Chorus plants, or other plants not listed above.

Wasting bone meal[]

Bone meal can be used on the following objects in the following situations, consuming it without any real effect:

On grass, ferns, and seagrass that do not have enough space to grow.^[2]
On seagrass that doesn't have water above.
On a dark oak sapling that is not in a group of four.^[3]
On a mushroom that is not on a block that allows it to grow into a huge mushroom.^[4]
On a sea pickle that is already in a group of four and has no valid locations to expand to.^[5]
On a bamboo (not bamboo shoot) that is blocked in the way.
On a sea pickle that is not on a coral block.
On a fungus that is not on its respective nylium.
Any plants that can't grow due to being block by the build limit.

Creating new plants[]

If bone meal is used on a grass block; tall grass, grass, flowers, and pink petals form on the targeted block and on random adjacent grass blocks in an 15×5×15‌^{[JE only]}/7×5×7‌^{[BE only]} area centered on the targeted block. The flowers/pink petals that appear depend on the biome, meaning that in order to obtain specific flowers, the player must travel to biomes where the flowers are found naturally. See Flower § Flower biomes for more information.

Using bone meal on a 2-block flower (rose bushes, sunflowers, lilacs or peonies) will cause one of the same type of flower to drop, without breaking the original. This is the only way to reproduce these flowers, since they cannot generate from using bone meal on grass blocks.

Using bone meal on a non-transparent block that is underwater generates seagrass on that block and surrounding blocks. Sometimes, if in a warm ocean biome, coral and coral fans may have a chance to generate as well, and in Bedrock Edition, coral (not coral fan) can be generated in any biome. In order for this to work, there must be 2 water blocks above the block the bone meal is being used on, and the lower one must be non-flowing water.

Using bone meal on a sea pickle on a coral block creates sea pickles. This generates sea pickles up to 3 blocks (of coral) away, so a 7+ × 7+ block (49+ blocks) of coral may be necessary, to return the most sea pickles per given bone meal attempt (more attempts grows them more numerously, exactly - including the range of it growing, like grass with heights on grass blocks - as coral and coral fans, though those others being non-solid blocks).

Using bone meal on netherrack adjacent to nylium converts the netherrack into nylium of the same type. If both crimson and warped nylium are adjacent to the netherrack that was applied with bone meal, there is a 50% chance that either type of nylium is created.

Using bone meal on nylium causes the corresponding roots and both types of fungi to appear on the nylium block and other nylium nearby, with the type of fungi matching the type of nylium being more common. In addition, using bone meal on the side of warped nylium creates nether sprouts and twisting vines.

Farmer villagers[]

Villagers with the farmer profession can collect bone meal from a full composter, with which they can make their crops grow faster.

Sounds[]

Java Edition:

Sound	Subtitles	Source	Description	Resource location	Translation key	Volume	Pitch	Attenuation distance
	Bone Meal crinkles	Blocks	When bone meal is successfully used	`item.bone_meal.use`	`subtitles.item.bone_meal.use`	1.0	1.0	16

Bedrock Edition:

Sound	Source	Description	Resource location	Volume	Pitch
	Blocks	When bone meal is successfully used	`item.bone_meal.use`	1.0	0.9-1.1

Data values[]

ID[]