Your grass clippings have turned to compost. They are absolutely safe to use in flower beds, soil, lawns. I know some potting soils do contain compost, I think your tomato will be fine. I would consider it extra fertilizer. It's decomposed enough now so you won't have to worry about seeds anymore either. It will perk up your flower beds really nice. I just did the same thing not too long ago, and haven't seen any volunteer grass in my flower beds at all. Hope this helped!

bsmith - having looked at some more literature, I've softened my stance on both triclopyr and fluroxypyr a good bit. I think it would be fine to use your grass clippings with a few caveats - these are my views on how to manage the risk to an extremely low and what I would consider acceptable level: 1. I wouldn't collect any grass clippings until after 4 mowing of treated grass. 2. The composting should go through a good thermophilic phase reaching at least 135 ðF for 5 days. 3. The compost needs to be fully cured and mature before applying it to soil. With those steps I would have no reservation about compost made with those clippings, provided that the herbicides were used as directed on the labels (i.e., no excesses, etc.).

Mulch is a good think to help moderate the soil temps and moisture. Grass clippings can be great or bad depending on the situation. If it is full of grass and weed seeds, it might not be great in the veggie garden. If it is cut from one of those lawns with no weeds or seed heads, it will probably be much better as mulch though you want to get it spread quickly before it can mat together into nasty clumps (grass left sitting for much time in plastic bags can turn into ugly stuff.) As to bugs in mulch, well it does offer habitat to bugs. The first season of organic gardening after many seasons of chemicals in a garden, the bad bugs might be overwhelming. With some time, the populations of creatures should even out a bit so the good will balance the bad and the garden can grow healthier. I've not gardened in hard clay soil but I've heard many people who have made their clay more workable by keeping it mulched and moist. I can say my sandy soil is greatly improved by keeping it mulched and moist. In my hot humid climate, organic matter breaks down quickly so I have to add lots of mulch often to keep a good thick layer going. Here is a link that might be useful: www.TCLynx.com

The reported estrogenic effects appear to my semi-educated eye to be of concern. There is a lot of space between 'no effect' and 'death by cancer' - i.e. chronic effects - where we are not looking hard enough, in my opinion. I do take issue whenever someone says "X was found to cause cancer in studies" which this web page does (quoting studies from the 80s), when it's done without regard for the doses used. Those studies (of necessity) jack up the concentrations until effects are observed in a small population of mice (rats, rabbits etc.). Then the dose-response relationship curve is extrapolated downward. They did a pretty good job in the first part of this article explaining the relevance of the concentrations related to toxic effects, but the author fell down on the 1980s studies. EPA is pretty conservative in their approach with regard to the amount of data required before they change policy for any given chemical. Numerous studies are considered as a whole package. Not making judgements on that, it is what it is. It will be interesting to see where this goes. Bottom line, we *know* there are chemicals in everything from our yards to gas tanks to computer keyboards that may have toxic effects at some level. Saying "Such and such is a carcinogen" as Elmer did above is not very relevant without a lot more information attached.