Crop Forecast

Your farm is probably twice as slow as it could be

Minecraft has a growth rule almost nobody knows: if the same crop sits on the diagonals around a plant, or on both axes at once, the game halves its growth speed.

A solid block of wheat triggers it on every single plant. You have been waiting twice as long the whole time, and the game never told you.

What this mod does

Press F3 + K, look at a crop:

WHEAT                                             3/7
Growing 2.0x slower than reachable here
~48 min on average  (reachable: ~24 min)
To reach ~24 min on average:
  1. Plant in separated rows
  2. Till 3 block(s) around it
  3. Bring water within 4 blocks (2 dry)

• A real number, not a mystery. How long until harvest, on average, and how long it could be.
• The cause, then the fix. Ranked by actual measured gain, best action first.
• Light problems said plainly. Not enough light? It tells you how much is missing and stops there - one problem at a time.
• Nothing when there is nothing to say. A well-built farm just reads at Minecraft's maximum growth speed.

It stays out of the way

The lens is off until you press F3 + K, exactly like F3+H or F3+G. No item, no block, no recipe, no keybind stolen from vanilla. Turn it on when you want an answer, turn it off and the game is untouched.

Built against the real game code

Every number comes from a faithful port of CropBlock and ServerLevel from Minecraft 26.2, not from a wiki. The growth formula, the neighbour penalty, the light gate, the random tick distribution - all replicated with the same operations in the same order.

Beetroot and torchflower are correctly handled as 1.5x slower than wheat, because they only process 2 random ticks out of 3. Most tools get that wrong.

76 unit tests cover the maths.

What this mod is NOT

• Not a cheat. It changes nothing: no faster growth, no bone meal, no new blocks.
• Not a farming mod. It adds zero content.
• Not a HUD overhaul. One panel, only while you hold the lens on a crop.
• Not a replacement for Jade or WTHIT. They tell you what a block is. This tells you why it behaves that way.

Supported crops

Wheat, carrots, potatoes, beetroot, torchflower.

Sugar cane, cactus, melon and pumpkin stems, cocoa, nether wart, bamboo and berries use different growth mechanics. The mod says so explicitly instead of guessing.

Compatibility

Languages

English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Italian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean.

Only English and French were written by the author - corrections for the others are very welcome on the issue tracker.

Configuration

config/cropforecast.json

{
  "showDetails": false,
  "toggleKey": 75,
  "rememberEnabled": false,
  "assumedRandomTickSpeed": 3
}

showDetails adds the raw numbers. toggleKey is the GLFW code paired with F3. assumedRandomTickSpeed matters only if your server changed that gamerule - the client cannot read it, so the mod states its assumption instead of hiding it.

For modpack makers

• Inclusion in modpacks is allowed (MIT).
• Client-side only: nothing on the server, no protocol, no world data, no save format.
• Adds nothing to the game - no items, blocks, recipes, tags or world generation.
• Off by default: it cannot surprise a player who never presses the key.
• Everything can be switched off in the config.

Links

• 🟩 Modrinth: https://modrinth.com/mod/crop-forecast