Alternating rows grow twice as fast as a solid field — the formula says so
Moist alternating rows give a 1-in-3 growth roll; a dry solid field gives 1-in-13. Planting every block halves your growth points, and hydration is worth more than layout.
"Leave gaps between rows" is standard farm advice and it is usually given without a number. Here is the number, from the growth formula the calculator on this page implements.
How a growth roll is decided
Each crop block accumulates growth points from the farmland under and around it:
base points = 1 + tile + 8 × (tile × 0.25) tile = 3 if moist, 1 if dry- Moist farmland: 1 + 3 + 6 = 10 points
- Dry farmland: 1 + 1 + 2 = 4 points
Then, if the crop has the same crop planted diagonally adjacent — which a solid field or a checkerboard guarantees — the total is halved.
Finally the chance that a random tick advances the crop is:
chance = 1 / (floor(25 / points) + 1)The four outcomes
| layout | hydration | points | chance per random tick |
|---|---|---|---|
| alternating rows / single row | moist | 10 | 1 in 3 |
| solid field / checkerboard | moist | 5 | 1 in 6 |
| alternating rows / single row | dry | 4 | 1 in 7 |
| solid field / checkerboard | dry | 2 | 1 in 13 |
The best layout is more than four times the worst. And the two halves of the advice are not equal:
- Going from solid to alternating rows, on moist farmland: 1/6 → 1/3, exactly double.
- Going from dry to moist, at the same layout: 1/7 → 1/3, slightly more than double.
So water is worth marginally more than spacing, and doing both is what produces the 4× gap. The usual mistake is a beautifully hydrated solid field, which throws away half of what the water bought.
Checkerboard is not a clever compromise
A checkerboard has no orthogonally adjacent crops, which feels like it should avoid the penalty. It does not — the halving looks at diagonal neighbours too, and a checkerboard is entirely diagonal neighbours. It scores identically to a solid field.
If you want the bonus, the rows have to alternate with something that is not the same crop: empty farmland, a path, or a different crop entirely.
Stage counts differ, so "one roll" is not one crop
A growth roll advances the crop one stage. The crops do not have the same number:
| crop | stages | advances needed |
|---|---|---|
| wheat, carrots, potatoes, pumpkin/melon stem | 8 | 7 |
| beetroot | 4 | 3 |
Beetroot needs 3 successful rolls where wheat needs 7, so beetroot finishes in well under half the ticks at the same layout — a fact that rarely shows up in farm comparisons because people compare yield per block rather than time per harvest.
Nether wart ignores all of it
Nether wart uses no growth points, no hydration and no layout penalty. It has a flat 1-in-10 chance per random tick and 4 stages, so 3 advances.
That means every piece of farm-layout advice above is irrelevant in the Nether. Pack wart as densely as you like; the only thing that changes its speed is how many random ticks its chunk receives.