Personally after one particularly unhappy experience I stay away from cheap when it comes to PC gamepads.

In Minecraft do trees currently grow on Alpha single player?

Can't get them to sprout no matter what ​.

Yes they grow. But they can take a while. I'm not certain but I think they grow faster if they get more light and are close to water (though the water thing might only apply to wheat) In fact you can grow trees underground if you place enough torches around it... its just takes even longer.

EDIT: I'm still playing Chrome: SpecForce. After a bit of combat I'm actually a lot happier with the game. The weapons seem to deal less damage but are way more accurate. A certain control issue in the first one (not being able to have "toggle" aim mode) has been fixed. Movement is a lot better but still makes me think my character is a drunk. also, the inventory has been expanded a bit to allow for an extra primary weapon. Overall the game seems cleaner and is a step in the right direction.

Also, it seems the developers that made Chrome also made the relatively recent Call of Juarez games and are working on Chrome 2. I might have to give the Call of Juarez games a try.

In Minecraft do trees currently grow on Alpha single player?

Can't get them to sprout no matter what ​.

Yeah they do man, depending on how close they are to a water source it could take upwards of four to five in game days. They also grow into insane shapes

Other than digging a river towards your settlement thing, not really. When a bucket of water is placed the water spreads for four blocks before stopping, and yeah it takes ages. It might be easy to possibly dig a small 1 x 4 hole and fill that with water, I'm not sure. My current map is right on the coast so I haven't really thought about it.

I suggest multiple buckets.

Waste of Iron, really. Especially when you can build a compass and iron armour or iron tools. One bucket is more than enough.

Yeah it's less about making pixel art now and more about being fucking awesome.