Sefichin and eggplants
Question
I have an established eggplant planted in my back yard well before shetmiah. During the winter it was dormant, and now it is beginning to wake up and produce eggplants. I looked up on the sefichin calendar and it says that eggplants are sefichin starting November this year (Kislev).
I'm confused, though. I thought that plants that behave like perrenials are not sefichin and, anyway, I planted it before shemitah. What is the status of the eggplants?
Answer
The answer has to do with understanding how the shemitah calendars work. These calendars reflect the situation in the marketplace. This is often different from the situation in home gardens.
For instance: Lemons in the marketplace may have kedushat shevi'it starting May, but many trees in home gardens had lemons with kedushat shevi'it on them already after Pesach. Each tree is different.
For eggplants specifically, the difference here is due to growing practices.
Large-scale farms do not wait for dormant eggplants to wake up in the spring. They replant. This is why you see that eggplants grown commercially are sefichin starting November.
However, in your case, where you planted it well before shemitah, the eggplant was dormant, woke up, and is now producing, the eggplants are not sefichin and may be eaten.