Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-68.43.153.12-20130112202731/@comment-128.208.36.147-20130122172938

the best way to get stickreed is to crossbreed a LOT of sugarcane. Cocoa beans *Can* work, but for being merely tier3, they take forever to mature.

By a lot of sugarcane, I mean plant at least 50 sugarcane per batch. (you can fertilize these with just 4 crop matrons if you plan it out). You should get stickreeds within three or four batches.

If you can find netherwart in the nether, then you can condense/tablet yourself a bunch of those instead, but since they grow very slowly, you'll have to plant more like 200 per batch...at which point, you may as well use weed-x since the stats will be so bad.