Rich Soil

Rich Soil

Rich Soil is what Organic Compost turns into, and it’s the best ground in the mod. It works like dirt, but every so often it gives the plant on it a free dose of bone meal, and it turns a plain mushroom into a mushroom colony. Till it with a hoe for Rich Soil Farmland, which does the same for crops and can’t be trampled.

There’s no recipe for it: compost is the only way to get Rich Soil.

Rich Soil Farmland with rows of ripe cabbages and onions, and tomatoes climbing a rope trellis behind.

How it works

Rich Soil gets a turn every so often, like a growing crop. Each turn it goes through these cases in order:

1. 1Mushroom aboveA brown or red mushroom on top turns into a mushroom colony. Every time, in any light.
2. 2Plant aboveOtherwise, 20% of the time: a free bone meal for the plant on top, if bone meal would work on it right now.
3. 3Plant belowIf nothing on top got it: the same free bone meal goes to cave vines hanging underneath.

At the default 20%, that is one free bone meal about every 6 min for each block of soil. The plant has to accept bone meal right then: a crop that isn’t fully grown yet, a sapling, a berry bush. You see green sparkles when it happens.

A mushroom on Rich Soil becomes a colony on the soil’s very next turn, in any light, with no chance roll. Colonies then grow on Rich Soil by themselves, and only there.

Server owners can change the 20% in the config, or set it to 0 to turn the boost off.

Rich Soil Farmland

Use any hoe on Rich Soil with air above it. You get dry Rich Soil Farmland, which behaves like normal farmland:

• Water. It turns moist when water is within 4 blocks, or when it rains on it, and slowly dries out otherwise.
• The boost needs moisture. It only hands out free bone meal while it’s fully moist. Dry Rich Soil Farmland gives nothing extra.
• No trampling. Jumping or falling on it never turns it back into dirt.
• Back to soil. Putting a solid block on it turns it back into Rich Soil, but melons and pumpkins can sit on it. Breaking it gives you Rich Soil.

Dry and moist

1. dry
2. moist

Farmer villagers work it just like farmland (Villagers).

What to plant on it

Rich Soil counts as dirt, so anything that grows on dirt grows on it, and rice and wild crops can be planted on it too. It also holds azalea, bamboo, big dripleaf, crimson fungus, crimson roots, dead bushes, mangrove propagule, melons and pumpkins growing from a stem, nether sprouts, small dripleaf, sugar cane, flowers, grass and saplings, warped fungus, warped roots, wither rose.

Good uses

• Rice paddies. Put Rich Soil under the rice: the free bone meal goes to the rice, and mature rice passes it on to its slow panicles.
• Tree and berry farms. Saplings, sweet berry bushes and bamboo get the free bone meal too.
• Ceilings. Cave vines hanging from a Rich Soil ceiling get it from above.

Good to know

• These never get a free bone meal: Brown Mushroom ColonyRed Mushroom ColonySandy ShrubSea BeetWild CabbageWild CarrotWild OnionWild PotatoWild RiceTomato ShrubBig DripleafBig Dripleaf StemCrimson NyliumFernGrass BlockLilacMoss BlockPeonyPink PetalsPitcher PlantRose BushShort GrassSunflowerTwisting VinesTwisting Vines PlantWarped NyliumWildflowers
• Mushrooms survive on Rich Soil in any light, even in full daylight.
• Rich Soil and Rich Soil Farmland both count as activators for nearby Organic Compost.
• The free bone meal works on plants from other mods too, as long as they accept bone meal.