If the grass is already growing fast, it does not help to fertilize and make it grow faster. It just wears out the grass. Organic fertilizer does not always make the grass grow faster. Alfalfa has growth hormones in it which can make the grass grow faster. If you want to use an organic, you might use ordinary corn meal, which is cheap this year.

With tomatoes, the earlier I plant, the better the year I have, but that sometimes means planting when it is really too cold for them at night and I have to do a lot to protect them. It pays off, though, when the big harvest hits in early June and I'm canning nonstop in the early June heat instead of in the early July heat that we have in a typical summer. I almost always am canning tomatoes on July 4th because we often have a cool July 4th for reasons I cannot logically explain. The reason last year was such a great tomato year here was that I was able to start putting tomato plants in the ground during the first week in March. I never really had to worry about cold threatening them after that either because it got so hot so early. That's why a lot of us had such a great tomato year last year----just because we could plant 4 to 6 or even 7 weeks earlier than usual. I expect y'all have a good July rainy spell maybe once a decade there at best? I bet the farmers and ranchers were really excited, and I hope they got enough rain to make a real difference this year. Here in my part of OK, we have a really rainy July about twice a decade....the two I remember best prior to this year would be 2007 (really the rain was more in May and June but it carried into early July) and 2004. When you get a lot of rainfall at one time, it can have all kinds of effects on tomatoes. There are a lot of variables, including the size and stage of development of the tomatoes prior to the rainfall. You're likely to see some concentric cracking with large-fruited varieties if they already were fairly mature and about to ripen. The texture of the fruit is likely to suffer and the flavor may seem watered down. You might see rainchecking on the fruit, but it won't affect the flavor, just the appearance. Sometimes there is so much rain you even see longitudinal cracking along with concentric cracking, but that is a lot more rare here. When a big rainy spell is forecast, if I think that the rain actually is going to fall, I pick all the tomatoes that have reached breaker stage before the rain starts falling. Since we often have heavy rain in the forecast and then it misses us completely, I often wait until it is about to rain and then I run outside and pick everything at breaker stage and beyond. That saves the flavor, texture and appearance of at least those fruit. A few days of heavy rain will only affect the tomatoes that were fairly large and near ripening at the time the rain fell. The flavor of smaller and less mature fruit that won't be ripe for, let's say another 3 or 4 weeks, generally isn't impacted unless you keep having more rain and then more and more and more. That seems unlikely in your location. If you have cherry tomato fruit that was close to ripening, you'll probably see a lot of splitting. You shouldn't see the texture issues after next week since y'all undoubtedly will return quickly to your usual hot, dry, miserable summer weather in days, not weeks. When we have persistent heavy rainfall and the fruit has to grow in it endlessly, the effect on flavor and texture is devastating. In 2004 the rain was more of a May-June thing and was heavy but not overwhelmingly so and the flavor/texture of the early fruit suffered, but by mid- or late-July, the fruit were fine. Then in 2007, we had about 8 or 9" of rain in May followed by about a foot of rain (and weeks of flooding) in June (you might remember that as the year of the big Gainesville, TX, flood) and the fruit wasn't any good at all until sometime in August. Rainfall is good, of course, and I hate to complain about any rain, but in terms of growing tomatoes, it is better to have the heavy rain in April and May when the plants are young and just setting fruit, than to have it in June and July when fruit is ripening and is being harvested. Often, when the heavy rain severely impacts the texture and flavor of the fruit, I dehydrate the tomatoes about half-way and then use them on sandwiches. Partially dehydrating them can save the flavor by pulling out a lot of the excess moisture, but it does change the texture, and the flavor might improve and intensity after you partially dehydrate them, but there is no guarantee. I also cook a lot with rainfall-affected tomatoes. Using them in salsa, tortilla soup,taco soup, etc. adds lots of other flavors that help make up for the fact that the rain has watered down the flavor and also has had a negative impact on the texture. Dawn

Thanks Babs. Do you think you could move it to a protected spot, such as against a wall or fence? Maybe it would help. Sean, you can see how one season of growth creates those sprays of stems. I prune it right after flowering in spring, usually by late April/early May. The thing about it spreading and taking over is that IF you allow those clambering stems to touch the ground, then they will definitely take root, and the from there it goes on, sort of as if the stems were hopping along the ground. But some vigilant pruning every spring will stop that. I think the possibility of bright flowers at almost any time during winter (when there's a little mild spell), along with the evergreen stems, is worth the trade off. Also, after flowering, it does produce leaves, but they're tiny and in the fall there's no raking at all needed. They just sort of fall off and blend.

Two of my facinations are Earthquakes and Hurricanes, and I have govt. apps for each. So... I've been watching these for going on 20+ years. One thing I've noticed, that the warmer the Pacific Ocean is the higher north the hurricanes go. They usually trail off toward Hawaii, but not this year. The warm water is allowing the hurricanes to travel more north, and, I suppose, this latest heat dome has kept the two latest close to the Baja... and on up. This latest, Kay, went all the way to the top before becoming a still-powerful tropical storm, bringing all that swirling air, winds and rain to SoCA. I only got a sprinkle this morning, but I'll still take the cooler air.