Good day. Around 1971 I was living in Salem and out of work. John Hatch, a friend, was a forester for U.S. Plywood, based at Willamina. He hired me to plant trees--not bare root. Our crew of five or so commenced work on Thomas Creek up the Santiam from Salem off Highway 22, perhaps west of Lyons. Our trees were just months old and grown in Styrofoam blocks with depressions about the size of a typical test tube but tapered; smaller at the bottom. The seeds were bedded in peat and Vermiculite and were irrigated from overhead. The root wad was cohesive enough that we could pull the wad out by grasping the stem (which was even a little woody) and insert it in a hole made by a wood-handled, steel dibble which was a slightly larger male form of the female depressions in the Styro block and had a small foot pedal. Dibble, grasp tree, insert, stomp, move on. It was significantly faster than bare root work and expected to have a much higher survival rate. The second phase involved plastic "test tubes" which may have been set in perforated flats or perhaps were injection-molded in workable units and then separated just prior to planting. They came to us loose. The delivery system was a gun--way cool--consisting of an aluminum tube about 30 inches in length, the lower part of which was a telescoping inner unit about 10 inches in length. Drop the plastic/tree in point down and little dogs would grip the plastic. Place the foot of the inner telescoping part holding the tree at your target spot and push down. The seedling unit, plastic and all, would be driven in the ground but--get this--little cutting wheels would slice the plastic longitudinally on the way in, so the roots could escape the plastic and grow outward. Obviously this was not ideal--we weren't taught to orient the slits of the tube so they would encourage the roots to grow against the wind--but the production speed, I would now estimate, was doubled over phase 1. We also planted a second site identified as Slick Rock Creek outside of Valley Junction, west of Salem, Highway 22. I am not certain if each method was exclusive to either area. I am 81 years old now and fond of reflecting on my many different jobs. My questions likely are obvious to you: Is there a way to discover any results from these experiments? Are any of these planting practices still used, or have they evolved? I look forward to any information that might enlighten or trigger other forgotten parts of that history.