The bug
You can force sugar cane and cacti to update by placing a sand block on top of two boats. This causes crops to grow extremely quickly (about 250 times faster than normal) and should be considered an exploit.
To reproduce
Follow the steps from MC-165034
Place a cactus on top of the sand block
→ ❌ It grows after a few seconds
Video
Forced Update Cactus and Sugarcane Farm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FKNx1ZCeBI
Forced Update Bamboo Farm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1LuXbXSYw4
Linked issues
relates to 2
Comments 4
This was not properly fixed. See here:
Yes it's method has just been changed, just requires the pistons to support it from not getting put into entity state completely.
Can confirm. I've changed the title and description since crops (wheat, beetroot, carrots, potatoes) are not affected as they cannot be placed on sand.
The fact that the falling sand block converts into a real sand block in the first place seems like a bug to me, so I created a new ticket for that: MC-165034