New Minecraft player’s hilarious tree plant fail goes viral

Luke Edwards
minecraft sapling fail featured image

A new Minecraft player has gone viral after they overcomplicated the tree-growing process, creating a special one-block environment in the hopes a lone sapling would grow quicker.

Everyone has teething issues when they start learning Minecraft. Given the sheer number of things you have to learn to get properly started, like finding food, building basic utilities and gathering materials, every player has made an incorrect assumption about how the game works.

This is no less true for mechanics like farming. Setting up some sort of local farm enables players to easily gather food without having to exterminate the nearby wildlife.

Seasoned Minecraft players will know there is a big difference between how trees and food grow. Unfortunately for one new player, they got their wires crossed.

Underground Minecraft farm
Farming is one of Minecraft’s most important mechanics.

Redditor u/SpaceBoiArt posted an image of his friend’s attempt to plant a tree on the r/Minecraft subreddit, and the post has exploded to over 45k upvotes.

The image shows the oak sapling placed on a fertile hoed dirt patch, with a single block water source next to it.

The player had clearly assumed planting trees echoed the farming mechanic, where players need to right-click on a patch of grass and place water nearby for it to become fertile. This allows players to grow seeds into wheat or multiply their carrots.

Minecraft sapling placed near water source.
This player’s tree planting was slightly too logical.

Seasoned Minecraft players will know, however, that you can just stick a sapling on any patch of grass. Then, provided it has enough space, it will spontaneously bloom into a harvestable source of wood.

Of course, while funny, there is some logic behind the player’s mistake. After all, trees do need water to grow, so you would expect putting a source next to a sapling would help to do just that.

However, if you’re looking for major agricultural success, you’re better off spending your time hunting down some skeletons for bone meal than creating a special one-block pool for a lone sapling.

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About The Author

Luke is a former Dexerto writer based in Oxford, who has a BA in English Literature from the University of Warwick. He now works with Dexerto's video department. You can contact Luke at luke.edwards@dexerto.com