I would like to offer this recipe. I have been using it for the past several years and it is delicious. This is the recipe from Ellie Topf's Small Batch Preserving, that Dave mentions. My first batch this year I accidentally doubled the Vinegar, and it is still delicious! CHUNKY BASIL PASTA SAUCE 8 cups coarsely chopped peeled tomatoes -- (about 9-12 tomatoes or 4 lb) 1 cup chopped onion 3 cloves garlic, minced 2/3 cup red wine 1/3 cup red wine vinegar 1/2 cup chopped fresh basil 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley 1 teaspoon pickling salt 1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar 1 6-oz can tomato paste Combine tomatoes, onion, garlic, wine, vinegar, basil, parsley, salt, sugar and tomato paste in a very large non-reactive pan. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, for 40 minutes or until mixture reaches desired consistency, stirring frequently. Remove hot jars from canner and ladle sauce into jars to within 1/2 inch of rim Process 35 minutes for pint jars and 40 minutes for quart jars in a BWB. Makes 8 cups. Steve

As far as I've heard (other than yesilee04 above, which I'm curious to hear more about) eggplants and tomatoes are not known to cross. They are in the Solanum genus, however (so, it's perhaps possible). I wouldn't count on it, though (let alone on it crossing well or easily). You certainly shouldn't have to worry about isolating your eggplants and your tomatoes from each other. If you do happen to get such a cross, you should take a lot of pictures and post them (and definitely save seeds from it to grow again and distribute). I'm doubtful of the mentioned cross between a pepper and an eggplant. Eggplants can be toxic if they are overripe or underripe, and the neurotoxins (which can cause your throat to burn) may have been mistaken for capsaicin. If this happens, please don't eat that eggplant. I did that once, and it made me kind of sick for about a week (though the only symptom the first day was my throat burning). Most of the toxins in eggplants are right under the skin or so, I've read. So, peeling the eggplants is supposed to be a great precaution against ingesting too many toxins. If your eggplant is so ripe that it has changed colors, don't eat it (it's too ripe). Generally, you're supposed to pick them soon after they stop growing (or thereabouts), unless you're saving them for seeds. As for what crosses well with tomatoes, generally the only things I know about are other tomatoes and many species of wild tomatoes (there are some wild tomatoes that don't cross easily, however). There is only one species of domestic tomato (if you don't count the inter-species crosses as other species of domestic tomatoes). If you cross a white beefsteak with a yellow pear tomato, I'm not sure what you would get. I would guess a yellow pear, but I could be wrong. Whatever the case, if you grow out the F2 seeds (enough of them) you should get plants with different combinations of the traits, and you may end up with a white pear plant in the F2 generation.

I think February is the right time to plant out tomato seedlings in your area and you would be picking tomatoes in April/May/June. People in the deep south can also grow a fall tomato crop planting out seedlings sometime in August I believe. If you can keep the plants alive you should start seeing some tomatoes set when the weather starts to cool down with highs in the 80s as others have mentioned.

Yeah, hard to guess if the pic didn't come through. I've seen folks be able to post a pic in the thread after, so hopefully the OP will come back and do so. I'm wondering what the chips were dry means. I know wood chip is a popular mulch, but not sure what the OP means about them being dry being a measure to know it's timem to water.