There are many crops to be found and grown in Minecraft. From growing wheat to even otherworldly crops like Nether warts.
Melons are one of the many Overworld crops that can be found and grown on your Minecraft farm.
They are a somewhat rare fruit that can be found in the world. Though, once you get your hands on them you will find that they do not grow like your typical crops, so you will have to learn how to grow melons first.
Where to Find Melons
Melons are somewhat of a rare crop. They can be found naturally growing in the wild, similarly to pumpkins, but only in certain biomes.
These biomes will mostly be the jungle biome and its variants.
They can be found on the ground, often spawning in piles or smaller clusters very close to each other. At times they can be hard to spot due to their green color.
In other cases melon slices can be found in chests, which is likely the easier way of obtaining the crop if you do not have a jungle nearby.
In chests melon slices can be found in woodland mansions or certain villages, primarily savanna villages and the like.
To harvest melons all you will have to do is break them. This can be done by hand, but it may be a little faster to do so with an axe. When broken, the melon block will drop anywhere between 3 to 7 melon slices which you can pick up.
How to Grow Melons
To grow melons you will have to obtain their seeds first. This is easily done once you have broken a melon block and obtained its melon slices.
Putting the melon slices on a crafting table or the crafting slots in your inventory will create melon seeds.
Once you have your seeds you will have to prepare your soil to grow them. The starting process is somewhat similar to growing wheat; you will need to supply a block of water and till the grass with a hoe within 4 blocks of the water.
When the farmland block turns dark it is wet and you can plant the melon seed on it.
For a melon to grow it will need space. When planted you will see a stem growing from the ground. The melon itself will attempt to grow on 1 of the 4 surrounding blocks from the stem.
This means that, in order to grow, each melon will need at least 1 block free next to it, unlike other crops.
In the image below you can see 4 melon stems and the tilled blocks around them. While growing, a melon will likely spawn on one of the 4 blocks around it, though these blocks do not need to be turned into farmland to grow.
As long as the block beside the stem is a dirt type block, a melon can grow on it.
As soon as you see the melon block it is fully grown and ready for harvesting.
To harvest a melon you do not want to destroy the stem. Instead all you have to do is break the melon block itself.
This will drop melon slices for you to pick up while leaving the melon stem unharmed. Melons, just like pumpkins, do not need to be replanted in order to continue growing. As soon as they are harvested the melon stem will begin to produce another melon.
Melon Benefits
On its own a melon slice, which you get from farming your melons, will not really grant you much.
A melon slice only restores one bar of hunger and it gives you only 1.2 hunger saturation, which is not much compared to how much bread does.
However, despite its low hunger filling, melon slices can still be valuable.
Melon slices can be used in trading with Villagers in villages. Sometimes they will be willing to buy a whole melon for 4 emeralds. So, using your melon slices to make whole melons to sell can help you stock up on the emeralds you may need for other trades.
Additionally, melon slices can also be turned into glistering melon slices.
Similarly to a golden apple, a glistering melon slice gives a simple fruit many benefits. This one is inedible, but it gives you other options.
Glistering melon slices can be used in potion making and in the Nether.
