Minecraft wiki entry for Melon, associated text: Placing a melon into a composter has a 65% chance of raising the compost level by 1. Composting a crafted melon block instead of 9 melon slices is very inefficient. For example, 100 melons could yield 9.29 bone meals on average. Meanwhile, if not crafted, 900 melon slices could yield 64.29 bone meals on average.