In my experience, the first cool nights trigger the plants to ripen seed more quickly... tomatoes & beans in particular. Unless your harvest was already winding down, it should actually increase briefly. I'm experiencing that phenomenon right now, after my first several nights in the 40's F. During the warmup which usually follows that first cold snap, the plants direct less energy into flowering, and more into ripening seed (and fruit) which is near maturity. The tons of rain can interfere with the late crop, though, if it causes disease. When it is cool & very wet in late summer, I've had late blight wipe out my entire tomato crop. I would suggest watching for disease symptoms on your tomatoes, and harvesting everything that is close to ripe if/when you see the first sign.

After many years of graduate school followed by teaching university environmental science courses I'm pretty comfortable in my understanding of how wood in the forest gets digested, and my ability to interpret observations in the field. What we are talking about here are fresh wood chips coated in wet clay if they are dug directly into the clay soil. This will seal off a good proportion of the surface area of the wood to microbial action and microbial spread. If composted a bit first the situation will be reversed and the clay lumps can get coated in fine particulates and humics, and fungal threads will be able to grow around the clay in a more or less contiguous organic environment rather than be blocked by walls of clay plaster. If you are refering to deep incorporation of organic matter down into the soil... if worms etc could break up clay through the addition of organic matter on the surface you would not see the fromation or persistance of the natural soil horizons we are dealing with (the clay fragipan in the B horizon). I would not have a clay problem because I have had grass growing on my lawn for 42 years since the house was built. This means not only 42 years of root penetration and worm activity on decaying roots, but also 42 years of grass clippings from a mulching mower. Still, there is a claypan nine inches below the surface. The yard is home to a good population of night crawlers. Sure the top nine inches is wonderfully mixed topsoil (due to worms and moles), but that doesn't do my tomatoes any good once that top nine inches dries out at the end of June and the clay blocks deep root penetration to subsurface water. Surrounding the yard is a secondary growth forest that is over thirty years old. Plenty of time for soil life to mix decaying organic material into the clay...it just hasn't happened. And here is what I have observed with brush piles sitting atop clay soil for 20 years (total decay of the brush)... a couple of inches of rich black compost over top of clay (the same with old manure piles). I have cut and developed garden plots out of both the yard and the wilderness areas. This includes deep digging down to 2-3 feet by hand to break up the clay and mix in organic matter so I am intimately aware of the soil structure, root pentration and wildlife penetration. Worms do not live in the clay layer other than for a few permanent vertical burrows, and plants do not put roots down into the clay to a great extent. In a forest, subsurface clay is broken up by penetration and decay of large woody tree roots (over centuries), not from branch and leaf litter. Invertebrate activity will mix surface material into the nooks and crannies left by decaying roots. Most tree roots are on the surface in the nutrient rich layer, with very few deep verticals, which is one reason it takes so long for deep rich soil to form. Darwin's estimates of soil turnover by earthworms as so many tonnes of soil per acre per year (in an English cultivated and/or garden setting) seems impressive until you convert it to inches, which turns out to be something like 1/8 inch of soil brought to the surface each year, so over 8 years you could get an inch of soil covering your wood chips, but even this isn't going to happen in worm depauperate clay.

Thanks everyone! I probably did everything wrong with these but somehow they survived the summer in my care. The containers are all from Costco. The aqua colored ones are big glazed stoneware containers that were sold for about $40 each last year during the spring. The Costco stores around Texas had their garden sections piled high with them. The terra cotta container is also an imported Italian one from Costco. They were selling for around $11 last year. I also use them for potted tomatos. I potted my citrus in a mix of equal parts peat, pinebark mulch, composted cow manure, and sand with gravel in the bottom covered by landscape cloth to provide better drainage. I have them on the same drip irrigation line as my tomatos and they get about 15 minutes of drippage every morning. I bought some citrus stakes (the hard fertilizer stakes) and pounded one in each each container for fertilizer. And then I haven't bothered to pay any attention to them since May. Before the first frost I'll probably roll them into the garage and set them in a row along the south wall of the garage which has windows. Last year we only had two frosts here in the Waco area, one in January and one in March. But you just never know.

You have to let it dry out some before you can mow it. See what happens when you water once a day for 10 minutes. The rooted bermuda should be fine on once a day for the next 3 days. The soil will dry some and allow you to mow then. Once you've mowed, put out some cat food or tuna cans and time how long it takes to fill them. That will be your new watering time from now on. That will put down a full inch of water all at once. Then watch the new grass for signs of wilting. It may wilt within 3 or 4 days. As soon as you see it wilt anywhere, apply about 1/2 a can and watch it. If it goes a full week without wilting, then go for the full inch next time. The idea is to develop deep roots to allow you to go for a week or longer before watering again. Where do you live?