Your October Tropical Homestead Checklist

Pick maize, beans and rice on dry days when you can, and handle them gently. The World Health Organization says damaged grain is easier for moulds to invade.

Keep bruised, cracked or insect-eaten grain apart and use it up first, and only the clean, whole grain goes into storage.

Fresh grain is still wet inside. In a study in Ghana, maize in the field was about 17 to 19% water, and drying brought it down to about 12 to 14%.

That matters, because moulds need damp to grow. Researchers say maize stored in the tropics should be dried until only about 13 to 14% of its weight is water, to keep harmful moulds away.

Spread the grain thin on tarps or racks in the sun, turn it often and cover it when rain threatens.

Some moulds make poisons called aflatoxins. The World Health Organization says large doses can cause acute poisoning, and there's evidence they can cause liver cancer.

You can't cook them away. So throw out grain and nuts that look mouldy, discoloured or shrivelled. Our guide to off-grid food preservation explains drying and storage without a fridge.

Before everything goes to the kitchen, set aside seed from your strongest, healthiest rainy-season plants, like beans. Dry it well, then keep it dark, cool and dry until the rains come back, the same way as February's tomato seeds. Next year's garden starts in this jar.

Then fill the empty beds. So what should you plant in October in the tropics? Garden calendars written for a cool climate count the months from winter to summer, but a tropical garden runs on the rain calendar, and every place keeps its own. The growers around you know yours best.

One good guide comes from the University of Guam, on an island in the western Pacific north of the equator. On its planting table of common vegetables, October opens three new windows: cherry tomatoes from October to May, Chinese cabbage from October to April and watermelon from October to March.

Chinese cabbage is ready to pick 45 to 60 days after planting, and cherry tomatoes and watermelon after 60 to 70 days. Tomatoes need stakes, a trellis or a cage to keep the fruit off the ground, the guide says.

Yardlong beans, sweet corn and cucumbers from September's list can still go in until April. The year-round crops keep growing too: leafy greens, green onions, long eggplant, hot peppers, okra, bitter melon, sweet potatoes and taro. A sweet potato takes 3 to 4 months, so one planted now is ready early next year.

Try not to put the same vegetables back in the same bed year after year. The university says to rotate between plant families, like the tomato family, the bean family and the melon family. It's one of the ways the guide lists to keep pests and plant diseases down.

Many seeds sold in shops aren't made for the heat. Lettuce, broccoli and kale can grow well on Guam if you pick a heat-tolerant variety, one made for a hot and humid climate. Our off-grid vegetable garden guide covers soil, watering and space.

The last storms of the season are the last free water for months. Make sure every drop off the roof goes into a tank, not onto the ground. Next month's list does the sum of how long it must last. Our rainwater harvesting guide shows how to size storage month by month.

If your tank spilled over after every storm, that was rain you could have kept. A second tank now means more to drink and cook with in March, when you'll want it most.

When the rains end, mosquitoes don't just disappear. Their eggs stay stuck to the inside of buckets, pots and tyres.

The CDC, the US health agency, says those eggs can survive drying out for up to 8 months, then hatch when the next rain covers them. So scrub out containers you won't use, turn them over or throw them away. Just emptying them isn't enough.

The cloudy season is hard on batteries, especially old-style lead-acid ones that sat half empty for weeks. Give them a full charge on the first sunny days.

Flooded lead-acid batteries, the kind with caps on top, also need their water checked. Our guide to lead-acid batteries explains the three simple rules that keep one healthy.

Solar power climbs again from here. PVGIS is a free solar tool from the European Commission. For Bangkok it shows one kilowatt of panels making about 3.7 kilowatt-hours a day in October, 4.1 in November and 4.4 in January.

A kilowatt-hour is about what a small heater uses in one hour. That growing surplus is the energy side of the dry season.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs until 30 November. India has two cyclone seasons, says its weather department: one before the monsoon and one from October to December, just after it.

Keep the shutters, torches and stored water from June and August ready until the season is over.

Walk around the house. Look for rusty roof screws, cracked plaster, rotten window frames and damp corners.

Fix small things now, while they're still small, and before the next rains find them again. Our guide to building an off-grid home explains what keeps a house standing.

After harvest, the fields are full of maize stalks, bean plants and husks. That's not rubbish. It's compost food.

Dry, woody leftovers are what gardeners call "browns". The US Environmental Protection Agency says a heap works best with two to three times as much brown as green, the wet stuff like kitchen scraps.

Chop stalks into short pieces so they rot faster, and bury kitchen scraps under 10 to 20 cm of them. Our guide to home composting explains how to build a heap.

Leave out plants that were sick or crawling with pests, though. The EPA puts diseased and pest-infested plants on its list of things not to compost, and the Guam guide says to clear away diseased leaves, fallen fruit and plant debris so pests can't spread.