Tutorial:Flower farming
Flowers are useful for decoration, dyes, and breeding rabbits and bees.
To grow flowers, you can use bone meal on a grass block. The block must either have no block above it (which is obstructing sun / moonlight), or be lit with a light level of at least 8. Flowers and tall grass spread over grass blocks up to 7 blocks away in both directions (a 15×15 square). However, approximately 95% of growth occurs within a 4-block radius (a 9×9 area) around the source grass block.
The types of flowers that spawn depend on the biome. See flower biomes.
Two-high flowers cannot be grown this way at all; instead, they can be farmed by applying bone meal directly to them, which causes an item to drop.
If you use bone meal directly on a one-high flower, it spreads (similar to using it on a grass block).
If the planting conditions are not met, flowers quickly pop out. This allows flowers to be used in the creation of light-sensitive mechanisms.
Poppies are also a byproduct of iron farms, as iron golems (apart from the iron) drop 0-2 poppies on death.
Poppies spawn much less frequently than dandelions. They are the most abundant in Mountains biomes, but are also somewhat common in Taiga and Tundra biomes.
Location
In Java Edition, small flowers cannot be duplicated by using bone meal on them, so they have to be generated by using bone meal on grass blocks within the right biome.
The best location to build a flower farm is on the border of a 
flower forest and a regular 
swamp (not a mangrove swamp), so that all types of small flowers (except wither roses and torchflowers) can be farmed within a single area. This occurs very rarely, only once every couple thousand blocks, so it's best to search such locations using a seed finding program.
Shifting floor design
Another technique for automated farming is to shift the ground beneath the flowers with pistons.
The general idea is to have a redstone clock trigger the following three events in order:
- A dispenser dispenses bone meal into the grass from below to produce flowers.
- A set of pistons pushes the ground one block horizontally
- Another set of pistons pushes the ground back to the original position.
Size comparison
This chart shows the area and flower yield of different sized designs, as well as the necessary number of pistons.
| Size | Area | Pistons |
|---|---|---|
| 1×1 | 1 block | 2 |
| 2×2* | 4 blocks | 4 |
| 3×3 | 9 blocks | 6 |
| 5×5 | 25 blocks | 10 |
| 7×7 | 49 blocks | 14 |
| 9×9 | 81 blocks | 18 |
| 11×11 (described below) | 121 blocks | 22 |
| 15×15** | 225 blocks | — |
- *The 2×2 design has no center, making it harder to use/build. This applies to any even size.
- **A 15×15 area guarantees that no flower fails to generate, but note that the earthquake collection method cannot be used (there are too many blocks for pistons to push). A somewhat complex water flow system is necessary for automatic collection. In Bedrock Edition, you can tap a flower with bone meal and it multiplies. Sadly, in Java Edition, you can only use this technique on two block high flowers.
Video
Mysticat - Minecraft Flower Farm: AFK Endless Dye 1.16
RAHsite - Automatic Wool Farm & Flower Farm - Minecraft Bedrock 1.16+
