I can't tell if my salvage stations, which I do have a settler assigned to each one, actually do anything. I don't have the local leader perk - it would cost me 7 freaking points, since I consider everything else in the tree useless, and I've read reviews that say the charisma locked options usually do not let you avoid violence, just boost rewards - so I don't have the supply and merchant options. A friend told me that if you do have that perk, settlements bring in mad caps, such that you can get tens of thousands of caps very easily. Maybe I should have gotten it - it would make it a lot easier to buy adhesives and keep my power armor charged.

You dont need to buy adhesives - or at least as many - if you go crazy with the right plants for food at your settlements.

I'm a fan of local leader but you dont need it to have mini adhesive factories at each settlement (that has good water supply)

1. Industrial water purifier to generate pure water
2. Plant corn, mutfruit and tatos
3. Every time you go back to settlement to unload, reload, whatever, pick a few - some - all the plants
4. You can make adhesive via the cooking station under vegetable adhesive using the plants and water you make

Between what i found / scavenged, and what i've made - havent had to buy any adhesives yet.

Yes found this, game say I have to assign settlers to plants, have assigned one but it looks like it want more, all the plats are close.

Is this just for the settlers to get food? Or do plants need it to regrow?

Plant was planted in the same batch but not all had fruit.

I haven't tested it myself, but someone on Reddit said that they took out all of the stuff from their settlement 'inventory' and set people to work salvage stations. When they came back they had a few items in their workstation menu. The items seemed to be random.