Mushrooms are a plant that can be found above and below ground in the world of Minecraft. They’re useful as a food item for making stew or rabbit stew, but did you know there’s more to them than that?
It isn’t always easy finding mushrooms on the surface. Luckily for us, just like most other foodstuffs, it is possible to grow your own.
However, before you can start a mushroom farm it is very important to know how light levels work in Minecraft in order to be able to grow them.
In this guide, I’m going to show you how to make a mushroom farm in Minecraft.
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Finding Normal-Sized Mushrooms
Most commonly they can be found in the swamp, old growth taiga, or mushroom field biomes above ground. Scarcely they can be found on patches of dirt within caves.
The Nether is another dark place where mushrooms prefer to grow and do so in much larger numbers.
To harvest regular mushrooms is relatively easy. Hitting them with your hand or any tool will break the mushroom and allow you to harvest it.
Alternatively, if the block under the mushroom is broken or water flows over it, the mushroom will drop and be ready for picking.
Finding Huge Mushrooms
Huge mushrooms are very easy to spot. They are about the size of regular trees in the game, standing at a minimum of 5 blocks to a maximum of 7 blocks tall.
Huge mushrooms can only be found above ground, in mushroom fields or dark forests, with the addition of swamps in Bedrock Edition.
Each piece of a huge mushroom’s canopy is called a mushroom block and it can be broken using just your hand or any other tool at your disposal.
Keep in mind that the stems of the huge mushrooms will not give anything.
Only their canopies will drop mushrooms when broken. Red huge mushroom parasols will drop red mushrooms and brown huge mushroom parasols will drop brown mushrooms.
How to Farm Small Mushrooms
Mushrooms can be planted on any surface, as long as it isn’t well lit. They can only grow and spread on blocks that are a light level of 12 or less.
This means a field directly in the sun is not your best option for making your mushroom farm.
The best way to make a mushroom farm is to make it somewhere indoors.
If the area is pitch black or not light enough hostile mobs will start spawning. If you make the area too bright, then you can’t plant or grow the mushrooms.
This means something like a normal torch or glowstone is too bright.
Now, there’s a few ways to get around this.
If you’re early in the game and don’t have many resources yet, your best bet is to use torches, but plant your mushrooms farther away from them. 2 blocks from a torch should be just enough for you to plant the mushrooms.
An alternative to torches can eventually be soul torches or soul lanterns. Because their base light level is 10, it means you can fill a whole room with them, without obstructing the mushrooms’ growth.
Additionally, you can also build your farm only one block high, without using any light at all.
A farm that is only a single block tall does not have any space for mobs to spawn. The blocks that cover the farm will also obstruct light.
This may sound a bit tricky for harvesting the mushrooms later on, but you can easily use water to do so. Simply put down a bucket of water and its spread will knock the mushrooms right back to you.
The farm can be as small or as big as you like it and, as long as it is dark enough, it can be as decorated as you want it.
How to Farm Huge Mushrooms
Huge mushrooms work a little differently than small mushrooms. They are safer to farm and a much faster way to get more mushrooms at the price of bone meal.
Mushrooms can be placed on virtually any block as long as the light level is 12 or lower, unless they are placed on podzol. Podzol can grow mushrooms in areas with a high light level.
Even though you can plant a small mushroom on wood, a huge variant won’t be able to grow from it.
A huge mushroom can only be grown in open areas.
Huge mushrooms can grow anywhere between 5 to 7 blocks tall, provided that there is one block of empty space above them. So if you’re making your farm indoors, make sure that it’s at least 9 blocks or taller.
Usually I do this outside and by marking the area like in the picture above. On the left is the area that a red huge mushroom would take up and on the right is the area that the brown mushroom would take up.
Red huge mushrooms take up a different area than brown huge mushrooms.
For brown huge mushrooms you will need at least 9x9x9 space to grow in, because their canopy spreads in a square of 7×7.
For red huge mushrooms you will need a space that is 9 blocks tall or taller, but their canopies are a bit smaller. So, an area of 5x5x9 would be enough for red mushrooms.
Light Levels
I will keep this bit relatively short, because a block’s light level is fairly easy to understand!
Light level is simply the strength of light on a block and how far light spreads from a certain light source. For example, a torch has a light level of 14, which means that its light spreads for 14 blocks in each direction, growing weaker with each block.
Blocks like glowstone or fire and lava have a light level of 15. This means they’re brighter and their light spreads further along the axis.
Additionally, each diagonal block from the light source is two light levels weaker as opposed to one.
Light levels are also used to determine the best light sources in Minecraft, especially when it comes to exploring dark areas like caves.
What to do Next
Looking for a food source that is going to sustain you much longer and is easier to grow?
Growing wheat in Minecraft is simple and will serve as a gateway to farming and making some of the best food items that you can bring along with you on your adventures.
