AND FOR VOWS. Our Rabbis taught: If one is interdicted by vow to have no benefit from another person for a year, he reckons twelve months from day to day. If he said ‘for this year’, then even if he made the vow on the twenty-ninth of Elul, as soon as the first of  Tishri arrives a year is completed for him; and this even on the view of those who say that one day in a year is not counted as a year. For he undertook to mortify himself, and he has mortified himself. But why not say [that his year ends in] Nisan? — In respect of vows, follow the ordinary use of language.11

We have learnt elsewhere: ‘Fenugrec 12 [becomes liable to tithe] from the time when it grows;13 produce 14 and olives, from the time when they have grown a third’. What is meant by ‘from the time when it grows’? — From the time when it grows sufficiently for resowing.15 ‘Produce and olives from the time when they are a third grown’. Whence this rule? — R. Assi said in the name of R. Johanan (some trace it back to the name of R. Jose the Galilean): Scripture says: At the end of every seven years, in the set time of the year of release, in the feast of  Tabernacles.16 Now how comes the year of release to be mentioned here? The feast of  Tabernacles is already the eighth year? It is in fact to intimate to us that if produce has grown a third in the seventh year before New Year, the rules of the seventh year are to be applied to it in the eighth year.17

Said R. Zera to R. Assi

(11) And men ordinarily talk of the year as beginning in Tishri.
(12) Or ‘fenugreek’, a leguminous plant allied to clover.
(13) I.e., its year is determined by the time of its growth and not of its gathering, as in the case of vegetables.
(14) vtuc,v It is a question whether this includes grapes or not. V. Tosaf.
(15) Cf. Tosaf. s.v. jnm,an .
(16) Deut. XXXI, 10.
(17) Tosaf. (s.v. dvbn ) points out that this would seem to come under the rule already given above of adding from the profane on to the holy, and answers that from this verse we should learn only that the produce if harvested must be treated as seventh-year produce e.g.. in respect of trading interest, but not that it is forbidden to harvest it.