Your January Homestead Checklist For An Off-Grid Home

A battery right now is like a piggy bank in a lean month. Less goes in, and the same amount goes out.

Old-style lead-acid batteries hate being left half full. Trojan, a big battery maker, warns against running them in a "partial state of charge" for long stretches.

When they sit like that, hard crystals slowly grow on the plates inside. Scientists call it "sulfation". That's just a fancy word for crust that steals some of the battery's storage.

An empty battery is also in danger from the cold. A lead-acid battery that's down to 20% can freeze at about -7 °C, while a full one only freezes at about -69 °C. So in grey weather, top it up with the generator instead of waiting for the sun.

Lithium batteries have their own rule. Many must not be charged below freezing, and some, like Victron's, only take a charge at 5 °C or warmer. Our guide to off-grid life in cold climates explains why batteries hate the cold.

Snow on a tilted panel usually slides off on its own, like a sledge on a hill. The steeper the panel, the faster it goes.

The US Department of Energy says clearing snow off panels is not recommended. If you really must, use a soft broom or brush. Shovels can damage the panels, and standing on one will damage it too.

Wood that's just been cut is often half water. It needs to dry until less than 20% of it is moisture before it burns well.

That takes 6 to 12 months, and hardwoods like oak can need up to two years. So the wood you split today is for the next heating season, not this one.

Splitting helps a lot. More of the inside touches the air, so the damp escapes faster, like a wet towel dries faster spread out than rolled up.

A closed-up house in the cold months traps the steam from cooking, washing and breathing. Too much of it, and mould starts to grow.

The EPA says to keep indoor humidity below 60%, ideally between 30% and 50%. Humidity just means how much moisture is floating in the air. A cheap humidity meter tells you, and a fan or a window open for a few minutes helps.

A frozen pipe can split, and you only find out when it thaws and starts spraying.

On the coldest nights, Illinois Extension says to let a little hot and cold trickle from the taps. Open the cupboard doors under sinks, so warm air reaches the pipes, and keep the house at 13 °C or warmer.

If a pipe does freeze, never thaw it with an open flame. That's how house fires start.

A well is built for the cold. A part called a pitless adapter lets the pipe leave the well deep underground, below the frost line, where the soil never freezes.

This is the quiet time in the garden, and the best one for thinking. Start with December's notebook: what grew well, what ran out and which plants got sick. Then grab paper and draw your beds.

Then rotate. That means growing each family of plants in a different bed every year. The RHS, Britain's big gardening charity, groups them into cabbage-family plants (gardeners call them "brassicas"), beans and peas, onions, potatoes and tomatoes, and roots.

Why move them around? The RHS says soil pests and diseases tend to attack the same plant family over and over. Clubroot in cabbages and white rot in onions are two common ones.

Move the family, and the bugs find an empty table. Another benefit: changing crops lowers the chance of the soil running short of one kind of food, and big-leaved crops like potatoes and squash shade out weeds for whatever comes next. Plants that stay put for years, like rhubarb and asparagus, sit outside the rotation.

Clemson University's garden experts say January is a great time for a soil test, so you can fix the soil before the growing season. It's simple: a lab looks at a little of your soil, and the results tell you what it's short of. Then you add only that, rather than guessing.

Now browse the seed catalogs with your plan in hand, including the vegetables and flowers you want for next summer's harvest. North Carolina State Extension's advice is to pick varieties with better insect and disease resistance. A resistant plant is like a kid who already had the chickenpox: the bug comes round, and nothing much happens.

Write your wish list now, and place the order in February, when you test last year's seeds first. Our guide to the off-grid garden helps you work out how much space you need.

Apple and pear trees are asleep now, with no leaves in the way. The RHS says to prune them between November and early March.

First, cut out any dead, diseased and damaged branches. If you see apple canker, a sunken, cracked wound on the bark, the RHS says to cut that growth out where you can.

Then thin the rest, but gently. Take out only about 10 to 20% of the canopy, the tree's crown of branches. Cut harder, and the tree answers with a mass of straight, leafy shoots called "watershoots" instead of fruit.

Keep the blades sharp and clean. The RHS warns that blunt tools leave tatty cuts and make the work harder, and Clemson adds that clean, sharp tools lower the risk of letting disease into the tree.

Want more trees in the orchard? Bare-root fruit trees, sold with no pot and no soil around the roots, are only on sale from late autumn to early spring while they sleep. The RHS says they're for planting straight away, in soil that drains well and doesn't stay soggy.

A compost heap slows right down in the cold, like a bear asleep in its den. Garden Organic, a UK charity for organic growing, says it doesn't stop for good, though.

Keep adding kitchen scraps and dry "browns" like leaves and cardboard. A thick layer of browns on top and a cover keep it warmer. Our guide to home composting shows how to get the mix right.

If you had a Christmas tree, it still has one more job. Purdue University's garden experts say the thinner branches can be chopped into wood chips for flower, tree and shrub beds.

Bigger boughs make a blanket over newly planted perennials and small shrubs, and you lift them off in spring. Purdue adds that birds like an old tree as shelter, as long as you tie it down so the wind can't blow it away.

North Carolina State Extension calls this the ideal time to mulch beds anyway, so the tree is a free start.