Your June Tropical Homestead Checklist

In Bangkok and Managua, one kilowatt of panels makes about 3.6 kilowatt-hours a day in June. In January Bangkok gets about 4.4, and in March Managua gets about 5.3.

A kilowatt-hour is an amount of electricity, about what a small heater uses in one hour. Those numbers come from PVGIS, a free solar tool from the European Commission.

There's a bonus, too: the rain rinses the dust off the panels for free. And the drop is smaller than winter brings to cold countries. But averages hide the grey streaks, when thick cloud sits on the roof for days.

On those days the battery carries the house. People who size batteries talk about "days of autonomy", which just means how many days the battery can run the house with almost no sun. Our guide to choosing a battery explains how to size one.

When the sun breaks through, use it. Pump water, wash clothes and charge tools then, and save the battery for lights, fans and the fridge at night.

On a grey day, skip what can wait. Every kilowatt-hour you don't use is one the battery keeps for later.

So what do you plant in June in the tropics? Mostly leaves. The rains turn the garden into a fast-forward button, and leafy plants love it.

The World Vegetable Center is a research group for tropical vegetables. When floods hit, it has sent kangkong (water spinach) and mungbean seeds in relief kits, because they grow fast and suit local conditions. Amaranth is another leafy crop the group works with.

Gardening Australia's Darwin gardener says leafy plants like Ceylon spinach and kangkong thrive in the heat and storms of the wet. Her tips: give them raised, well-drained beds, so the roots never sit in a puddle, and cover the soil with coarse mulch like hay or leaves, so big raindrops don't wash it away.

Rain also washes food out of the soil, so she feeds the plants regularly, every week or so. Harvest kangkong when the shoots are about 20 centimetres long.

Sow a little every two weeks, so a new batch of leaves is always coming. Gardeners call this succession planting. The weeds will love the rain just as much, and they're July's big job.

Tomatoes have a hard time in hot, wet weather. Heavy rain damages the flowers, so less fruit forms, and the wet season brings more disease.

Some growers use rain shelters, a plastic roof over the plants. Others graft tomatoes onto the roots of aubergines (eggplants), which helps the plants survive flooding and a soil disease called bacterial wilt.

That's right: a tomato plant on the roots of an aubergine. In farm trials in the Philippines and Vietnam, every plant that wasn't grafted died after heavy rain and flooding.

If that's too much work, leave them for the dry months. Our off-grid garden guide has more on soil and watering.

In June, a tank can fill in one storm and overflow in the next. Keep the first flush working and note how often it overflows: October's list asks whether a second tank is worth it. Every litre kept now is one you can drink in March.

Rain looks clean, but the roof isn't. Bird droppings, dust and leaves end up in the tank.

So anything you drink goes through steps. The first flush goes away, a filter catches the bits, and then something kills the germs: boiling, a UV lamp or the right dose of chlorine. Our guide to off-grid water filtration shows which treatment removes what.

South of the equator, cyclones come from about November to April, so the same list fits there then.

If April's storm jobs are done, the drains are clear and the shutters are fixed. What's left is the loose stuff: Ready.gov, the US emergency agency's website, says to bring loose outdoor things inside. It also warns that shops may be empty for days or weeks after a storm, so keep medicines and supplies at home.

A septic system is an underground tank plus a "drainfield", a patch of soil that soaks up and cleans what goes down the drains. In very wet weeks that soil is already full of rain.

The US Environmental Protection Agency warns that a drainfield in saturated, flooded soil can't treat the wastewater. The only way to avoid a backup into the house is to use the system less.

So in the wettest weeks, take shorter showers, spread out laundry, and never drive over the drainfield. Our guide to septic systems and composting toilets explains how the system works.