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How to Craft Bone Meal in Minecraft

Bone Meal in Minecraft, drawn from the game's own item texture. Growing crops instantly. Minecraft has used the name Bone Meal since Beta 1.2.

Bring 1 Bone to a Crafting Table and you have Bone Meal. You end up with 3 Bone Meal each time.

Bone Meal Item ID and Give Command

The item ID for Bone Meal is minecraft:bone_meal. In commands the namespace may be left off, so bone_meal works too. Checked against Minecraft Java 26.2.

Give yourself one
/give @p bone_meal
Give a full stack of 64
/give @p bone_meal 64
Give it to a named player
/give Steve bone_meal 1

Cheats have to be on for Bone Meal to appear this way, and the same command works on Bedrock Edition, where the name is written the same.

Overview

Bone Meal accelerates crop growth and spawns flowers and tall grass on grass blocks. Bone Meal uses a shapeless recipe, so the ingredients can go in any cells of the grid as long as all of them are present.

Minecraft has used the name Bone Meal since Beta 1.2, the oldest release whose language file lists it.

The materials come together from a few sources: you will be working with bone (kill skeletons).

One Stack, Counted

Feed 1 bone a craft, so 64 covers 64 of them: 192 bone meal. It divides evenly, no bone left over.

Materials Needed

ItemAmountWhere to Find
BoneBoneBone1xKill skeletons

Gather Bone (kill skeletons), then take the lot to a Crafting Table.

Step-by-Step Instructions

  1. 1

    BoneBoneBone

  2. 2

    3x Bone Meal

Minecraft crafting recipe for Bone Meal: 1 x Bone in a crafting table, making 3 Bone Meal.

Tips & Notes

  • Cell positions do not matter here: drop Bone anywhere in the grid and Bone Meal appears.
  • Shopping list: 1x Bone. Plan the Bone first: kill skeletons.
  • The recipe returns 3 Bone Meal at a time.

Uses for Bone Meal

  • Growing crops instantly
  • Growing flowers and grass
  • Crafting white dye

What Bone Meal Goes Into

One other recipe on this site lists Bone Meal as an ingredient.

Bone BlockCrafting Table

View detailed item stats, durability and properties for Bone Meal on the Astroworld Items Database.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do I need to craft Bone Meal in Minecraft?
1 Bone at a Crafting Table: that is the whole shopping list for Bone Meal. The cells do not matter here, so drop it in anywhere, and one craft produces 3 Bone Meal.
What can you make with Bone Meal?
Bone Meal is an ingredient in 1 other recipe on this site, including Bone Block. The section above links to each of them.
Where do you find the materials for Bone Meal?
Bone Meal draws its parts from several different places. Bone: kill skeletons.
How much Bone Meal do you get from one craft?
The Bone Meal recipe makes 3 Bone Meal in a single craft.
What is the item ID for Bone Meal in Minecraft?
The Bone Meal item ID is minecraft:bone_meal, and in a command you can drop the namespace and write bone_meal on its own. Checked against Java 26.2.
Can you farm everything you need for Bone Meal?
Bone Meal needs nothing you have to go find: bone from skeletons. Set those up once and you can keep making bone meal.
What is the give command for Bone Meal?
The command for Bone Meal is /give @p bone_meal. Add a number for more than one, so /give @p bone_meal 64 hands you a full stack, and it only runs with cheats enabled.
Is the Bone Meal recipe the same in Java and Bedrock Edition?
No difference to worry about: Bone Meal takes 1 Bone at a Crafting Table on Java and on Bedrock alike, 3 at a time.
Does it matter where you put the ingredients for Bone Meal?
No, Bone Meal is a shapeless recipe, so 1 Bone can go in any slots you like. Only the set of ingredients is checked, not their arrangement.
What version of Minecraft added Bone Meal?
As far back as the language files go, the bone meal appears under this name in Minecraft Beta 1.2 and not before. The recipe file cannot narrow that down, because 1.13 renamed every recipe file in the game. The Bone Meal recipe above matches the current release.

Sources

Grid, ingredients and yield
1 Bone in, 3 Bone Meal out, Crafting Table. Java 26.2, .
That Bedrock agrees
Bedrock 1.26.40.05, same ingredient.
How far back it goes
Java Beta 1.2 is the earliest release that calls it this. From all 163 released Java clients, rd-132211 to 26.2.
That the ingredients come back
What drops, what villagers trade and what farms regrow in Minecraft Java, followed through the recipes to see what those ingredients can be turned into.
Stack size
The Astroworld Items Database, built from the same jar.
The recipe book unlock
What unlocks it in the recipe book. Java 26.2.
The stack sum
Counted, not played: 3 Bone Meal per craft against the stack size.

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