Orlah & Neta Revay
Does Beit Ha'otzar membership cover neta revay too? Do I take TM on the neta revay fruit?
I have the first fruit which just fell off a tree which is neta revay.
1. Does our Beit Ha'otzar membership cover neta revay or just terumot umaasrot?
2. If not, do I need to say the berachah and set aside a coin? If yes, do I say the berachah and just have the Beit Ha'otzar membership in mind?
3. After that, do I take terumot and ma'aserot as usual?
What to do if my new house has trees and I'm not sure if they are orlah?
We bought a house last year that came with lots of fruit trees. I do not know if the fruit from some of the trees (the lemon trees for example) is more than 3 years old. I also don't know (if these trees are more than 4 years old) if the previous owner redeemed the neta revay fruit. What should I do in this case? Just a note that I just took terumah and ma'aser from the lemons on these trees and started using them.
Solutions for continuing orlah count for citruses growing abroad
Hello Rabbi, Thank you very much for the information and guidance that you provide. I am growing citrus trees from seed in chutz la’aretz. At this stage, they are being kept in containers for practical reasons while they are still young, with the intention of planting them in the ground once they are more mature and closer to fruit-bearing age. At present, some of the trees are in 1-gallon containers and some are in 6-gallon containers. As they grow, we expect to move them into larger containers, likely in the 15- to 25-gallon range, before eventually planting them in the ground. The containers are plastic and do have drainage holes already, and if necessary we can enlarge the drainage holes to approximately 2.5 cm. We built a screened enclosure on our concrete driveway in order to protect the trees from the Asian Citrus Psyllid, the insect that spreads citrus greening disease. The screenhouse has only a mesh roof and no permanent solid roof, so rain and sun pass through it. My question is primarily regarding orlah. I would like the arrangement to count both while the trees are still in pots and later when they are planted in the ground. My concern is whether the trees are considered disconnected from the ground because the containers are resting on a concrete driveway. I would like to know whether there is a halachically valid way to create a sufficient connection to the ground so that the containers would not be considered as being on an unconnected surface. One possibility I am considering is drilling a hole through the concrete driveway down to the soil beneath it, and then covering the floor of the screenhouse with a layer of soil, so that the pots would sit on soil that is connected through that opening to the earth below. Another possibility would be to create a connection between the soil placed inside the enclosure and soil adjacent to the driveway. The containers could either sit directly on the soil, or, if halachically acceptable, they could be suspended slightly above the soil on blocks or on some kind of perforated surface, such as a mesh table, with open view to the soil below. Would either of these solutions create a sufficient halachic connection to the ground for purposes of orlah? If so, are there specific requirements regarding the size of the opening/hole that is drilled in the concrete, the drainage-hole size in the containers, the thickness or continuity of the soil layer, whether the pots must rest directly on the soil, or whether a perforated surface above the soil would also be acceptable? Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
Orlah for trees on a porch
We bought a limequat tree grafted onto another type of citrus tree. It is in a pot with holes in the bottom, on a brick porch. Do we have to wait 3 years before we use the fruit?
Grafting new shoots onto matured blueberry branches to solve orlah issue
I have a blueberry bush that sends up new shoots which need their own 3 years. From my understanding they only give out good fruit on younger wood. Would it be allowed to keep old canes and graft new shoots that come out of the ground onto those old shoots and therefore from a halachic perspective it is old enough, but from a botanical perspective it is still young.
Retroactive redemption of neta revay/observing orlah laws
We just made aliyah and are renting an apartment from a non religious family that has lots of fruit trees. The trees are all more than 6 yrs old. I don't know and can't ascertain whether they observed any of the halachot of orlah. Since the trees are more than 4 yrs old, do I not have to be concerned or is there still something we need to do retroactively?
Anything the trees produce this year we will be mafrish terumot and ma'aserot ourselves as they have given us permission to collect the fruits from the garden.
Orlah obligation of blueberry plant growing on a detached platform
Recently I bought a blueberry seedling which, according to El-Rom Nursery, is considered two years old (halachically) and grown in a detached platform. The pot is perforated, and in my case it’s growing on tiles. Does it continue its orlah year count this way, or do I need to start counting again? And if at some point it’s placed directly on the ground, will I then need to restart the count?
Another question — the plant has both thicker and thinner branches growing from the main stem. Do I need to ensure that no new branches grow from the base, since that would mean starting the orlah count again for those branches? Or is the plant as a whole considered one entity, regardless of the branches?
Thank you.
Are raspberries subject to orlah?
Question: I saw that a green grocer's kashrut certificate in Jerusalem stated that only non-mehadrin stores are allowed to sell raspberries. Why is that?
Is monk fruit considered orlah?
A mashgiach of a large kashrut organization, who works in China, checked a company growing monk fruit in a greenhouse onsite. He found out that since monk plants produce the most fruit the first years, the company harvests the fruit only from monk plants during their first three years. In light of this, is monk fruit considered orlah?
Orlah and aeroponics
I want to grow a blueberry bush at home. You wrote that orlah applies to hydroponically grown trees. What about aeroponics?