The Giddings Machine Company is making a new probe and tip for AGVISE that is designed to handle very wet soil conditions. Many of you will recognize the Giddings name from sampling equipment used by soil survey people to map soils in the U.S. and Canada the past 45 years. Due to very wet soil conditions last fall and this spring in many areas, we wanted our customers to have one more option in sampling tubes and tips to try on wet soils in their area.

The new sampling tube from Giddings has the same quicktatch collar as all AGVISE probe tubes. The new probe tube is solid (no slot) hardened steel and has an outside diameter of 1 1/4" compared to 1 1/8" for our standard tubes. The extra space inside the tube allows sticky soil cores to slide with less sticking to the sidewall. The new tip for the Giddings probe has an opening which is 11/16" and a lip on the inside of the tip to reduce plugging. AGVISE will continue to handle all of our regular line of stainless steel probe tubes and tips.

We are only making 100 of these new Giddings probe tubes and tips for this fall. We do not have a price on them yet, but we know they will cost more than the other probes we offer. Customers have told me that they will pay more if they can find a probe that works well under sticky wet soil conditions. We will do our best to keep the price down. If the Giddings tubes perform well this fall, we should be able to reduce the price of the tubes with a larger order next year.

The new Giddings probe and tip should be available by mid August. Give us a call if you want to buy one of these Giddings probes to use on wet soils in your area.