Your April Homestead Checklist For An Off-Grid Home

The tomatoes and peppers on your windowsill have lived a soft life. No wind, no strong sun, no cold nights. Put them straight outside and they can wilt or burn.

So you toughen them up slowly. Gardeners call it "hardening off". That's just a fancy way of saying you get the plants used to the outdoors bit by bit, like easing into a cold swimming pool.

South Dakota State University says to take 7 to 14 days. Start with 3 to 4 hours outside in a sheltered spot and add a little more each day. Keep them in if the day's high stays below about 7 °C.

Don't forget the flowers. SDSU gives full-sun annuals the same slow start, a little more sunlight each day.

Every area has an average last frost date. But here's the catch: "average" means there's still about a 50% chance of a frost after it.

Illinois Extension says tomatoes, beans and summer squash can go out from around that average date. February's sowing count planned on a week or two after it, which is the safer bet for tomatoes. Peppers and winter squash like it warmer, so wait about two more weeks.

Tomatoes really get going once nights stay above about 10 °C. If a cold night is forecast after planting out, throw an old sheet or a garden fleece over them.

So what can you plant in April without waiting? The tough crops. Illinois Extension calls onions and peas "hardy" and plants them four to six weeks before the average frost-free date. Carrots, lettuce and beets are "half hardy", and they can be sown from late March to early May.

The University of Maryland's planting calendar is built for a last frost around mid-April. It puts carrots, spinach, lettuce and radishes straight into the garden this month, and the broccoli, cauliflower and onion plants started indoors go out now too.

Short on space? Lettuce grows happily in a container by the back door. Our guide to the off-grid garden shows how row covers and cold frames add warm weeks to the season.

Here's a handy rule. One millimetre of rain falling on one square metre of roof gives one litre.

So a 100 m² roof in a 10 mm shower collects about 1,000 litres. That's five big 200-litre rain barrels from one rainy afternoon.

You won't catch all of it. The Texas rainwater manual says systems usually collect 75 to 90%, because some splashes out, some evaporates and some goes down the first flush. Reconnect the barrels you drained in autumn, and our guide to rainwater harvesting shows how to size a tank.

Warm weather wakes up the mosquitoes, and still water is their nursery. The CDC says a mosquito can go from egg to flying adult in about 7 to 10 days.

So once a week, empty anything that holds rain, like buckets, saucers and old tyres. Barrels and tanks should be closed, with fine mesh over every opening.

The CDC says to check your well at least every spring, to make sure nothing mechanical has gone wrong. Have the water tested at the same time.

The CDC says to test private well water at least once a year for four things. Coliform bacteria show whether germs from soil or waste are getting in. Nitrates often come from fertilizer or septic systems. Dissolved solids tell you how much stuff is dissolved in the water, and pH tells you how acidic it is. Your local health department or a certified lab can do it.

If your area flooded, be extra careful.

After a flood, the EPA warns that wells older than 10 years or shallower than about 15 metres are likely to be contaminated. Don't switch on a pump that has been under water. Don't drink from it until the well has been disinfected and a lab test comes back clean.

As the weather warms, the tiny creatures in your compost heap get busy again. They need air to work.

Cornell University says a heap works best between about 32 and 60 °C. A compost thermometer, a long metal spike you push into the middle, tells you where it is.

Turn the heap when it climbs above 60 °C or drops below 32 °C. Turning means forking the outside into the middle and fluffing it up, like stirring a pot so it cooks evenly. Above about 71 °C the heap gets so hot it kills its own helpers.

If it's too dry, add a splash from the barrel, and if it smells, add browns and turn it. Our guide to home composting has more fixes.

Spring ground is soft and wet. If you have a septic system, the drain field, where the cleaned water soaks into the soil, is easy to damage now.

The EPA says never to park or drive on it. Heavy wheels squash the soil, and then the water can't soak away.

If the field is soaked after heavy rain, go easy on showers and laundry for a while.

On a sunny April day, a battery can be full by lunchtime. Then the charge controller, the box between the panels and the battery, turns the flow down so the battery doesn't get overcharged.

That's good for the battery, but it means free power goes unused. So keep March's habit of running the hungry jobs in the sunny hours. Our guide to charge controllers shows what the box does, and our off-grid power guide shows where it sits in the whole system.

The generator might sit until autumn now. Fuel that sits goes stale. Honda's storage guide uses petrol with fuel stabilizer for storage of up to a year, and says to drain the carburetor if the generator runs less than once a month.

Follow your manual for long storage. It saves a frustrating pull on the starter cord in October.

April is planting season, and a tree is the slowest, cheapest air conditioner there is.

The US Department of Energy says leafy trees can block 70 to 90% of hot summer sun. In winter they drop their leaves and let the sun back in. A well-planned garden can cut the cooling bill of an unshaded home by 15 to 50%.

Plant them on the sunny sides of the house, where afternoon heat hits hardest. Our guide to off-grid cooling explains why shade beats almost everything else.

Then tuck the new tree in with mulch, a blanket of wood chips or bark. UNH Extension says to spread it 5 to 10 cm thick, out to the edge of the branches, with none touching the trunk. Piled up against the bark like a little volcano, it stays wet and invites rot.

The fruit trees you already have need a different kind of care now, because their blossom is their soft spot. Illinois Extension says a frost of about -1 °C during or after blooming can kill some or all of the flowers, and with them the fruit. Apricots and sweet cherries are the most at risk, apples the least.

So on a frosty night, the RHS says to throw fleece over small fruit trees and take it off again in the morning.