If you want to thrive in Minecraft’s survival mode you’re going to need to make yourself a lot of food. A lot of food requires an even greater number of crops. Crops which can, at times, be painfully slow-growing. Thankfully, the Composter can help you generate a steady supply of Bone Meal to get your crops growing faster. It also helps find a use for certain items you may have way too many stacks of. Crafting a Composter in Minecraft is a fairly simple endeavor – the recipe is easy to acquire and there are only a few things to keep in mind when composting. Here’s how to make and use a Composter in Minecraft.

How to Make a Composter in Minecraft

The crafting recipe for the Composter in Minecraft can be seen in the screenshot above. All you need is 7 wooden slabs of any variety, placed into a U shape on a crafting table. You can craft Wooden Slabs by putting three blocks of wood in a horizontal line.

Composters can also be located in villages as job site blocks for farmer Villagers. You can use any tool to break them, but an axe will be the fastest. Be aware that when you break Composters the compost inside will disappear. Whichever way you get one, you will then be able to place your Composter wherever you please and start filling it with random junk.

How to Use a Composter

Random junk, however, won’t always guarantee you the best results. For every acceptable object (mostly food and plants items) you add to a Composter there is a percentage chance that a level of compost will be created. The success rates vary from 30-100%, depending on the object. If you see green sparkles then you will know the level has risen. After you’ve created seven levels of compost the top of the bin will turn white and you will be able to ‘use’ the Composter one final time to receive 1 Bone Meal.

You can find an exhaustive list of composting rates on the Minecraft Wiki, but know that unless you’re throwing in Cake or Pumpkin Pie, you won’t be seeing compost levels rise for every item you put in.

Some objects you can’t throw in a Composter are Bamboo, Poisonous Potatoes, Dead Bushes, meat, and fish (along with obvious things like ores or, say, lava). You can also place a Composter on top of a Hopper to funnel out the Bone Meal into a chest for you, if you so desire.

Minecraft is available now for PC, iOS, Android, PlayStation4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and various other platforms.