Potato salad is the food line these guides actually document. It is not a full cookbook. The bowl is a processed item made from potatoes and tomatoes, then sold or stored.
What one bowl consumes
Every potato-salad description uses four crop inputs and both potatoes and tomatoes. The guides do not publish how many of the four are potatoes versus tomatoes. Two layout habits are used as substitutes for that missing recipe split:
- About three quarters of planting time on potatoes and one quarter on tomatoes.
- About one tomato layer for every two or three potato layers.
If the processor stops while potatoes are still piled up, you are short of tomatoes. Adding another potato layer does not fix that.
Potatoes are reported to take about 6 minutes and 15 seconds from planting to harvest. A tomato growth time was not published. Do not copy the potato timer onto tomatoes.
Build the line in this order
- Till soil with a wooden or iron plow and plant potato seeds and tomato seeds.
- Move harvested crops on conveyor belts. Crop totems can harvest for you, or you can harvest by walking the plot.
- Wash the crops. The tower layout puts coal totems beside the washing stations so the washers stay fueled. One writeup says two coal totems for that station.
- Set a food processor to potato salad. Workbench Tier 2 is the reported unlock for food processors.
- Put a chest, including a medium chest if that is what you have, on the processor output. When the first chest fills, a second chest on the same line keeps the belt moving.
Washers, processors, and chests are the line. A drill and a steel mill are a different project. Do not mix copper ore into the food belts.
The 600-coin figure
When town prices are described as peaking, potato salad is reported around 600 coins per bowl, which is about 150 coins per crop input. That is a peak report, not a merchant contract. Use the bowl calculator only after you replace 600 with the price you can actually see. Seed prices are not fixed in these notes, so the calculator does not invent a seed cost.
Fertilizer versus more machines
Basic fertilizer comes from a composter fed with fish. One layout note says three fish produce three fertilizer units. Fertilizer is the lever when crops are the slow stage.
When crops already back up, fertilizer and extra plots make the jam worse. Reported fixes are another washer, another processor, or a split belt. A tower note says to pair about every four or five crop layers with dedicated washers and processors. That ratio is a builder's rule for that tower, not an official machine speed.
Where this sits in the coin path
Slime gears can be sold before this line exists. Potato salad is the home-island loop once the processor is crafted. Onions stay off this belt; they are a separate plot on the farm layouts page. Propellers show up later as a part in automated salad builds, and they come from fishing rather than from the crops. See fishing.