November 1, 2026

What plants can be planted in winter while the soil is workable

In winter you can plant dormant stock. That covers bare-root fruit trees, bare-root shrubs and roses, cane fruit, hardy perennials, rhubarb crowns and asparagus crowns. Each one goes in on a day when the soil is neither frozen nor waterlogged. A dormant plant has no leaves drawing water out of it, so its roots can settle into cold ground before spring growth puts any demand on them.

How dormancy affects planting

A leafy plant loses water through its leaves all day. A freshly moved plant has lost most of its fine roots, so it can't replace that water fast enough, and it wilts. A dormant plant has dropped its leaves and sealed its buds. Its water loss falls close to nothing, so the damaged root system has time to regrow.

Roots of many hardy plants keep growing whenever the soil is unfrozen, even while the buds stay shut. Buds respond to air temperature and day length. Roots respond to the soil around them, which cools more slowly than the air. A tree planted in the dormant season pushes new root tips through winter and early spring. By the time its leaves open, it has roots working in its new hole.

Tender plants have no dormant stage that survives a freeze, so tomatoes, peppers and squash stay out of the ground until spring. Hardy plants already in full leaf behave like any summer transplant and need steady watering. The winter planting list is the list of plants you can buy or dig while they sleep. Our guide to how dormancy works covers what triggers it.

• Bare-root fruit trees. Apples, pears, plums and cherries ship leafless. Set them at the depth they grew in the nursery, which shows as a color change on the trunk.
• Bare-root shrubs and roses. Soak the roots before planting so they start out hydrated. Spread them over a mound of soil in the hole.
• Cane fruit. Raspberry and blackberry canes establish fast from dormant roots. Cut them back after planting so the roots feed new canes.
• Rhubarb crowns. Set the buds near the surface. A crown buried deep in wet soil rots before it wakes.
• Asparagus crowns. Spread the roots in a trench and cover them lightly. Fill the trench in as the spears come up.
• Hardy perennials. Dormant divisions and potted perennials both work. Firm the soil around them so frost can't lift them.

What frozen soil does to a new planting

Frozen soil defeats a planting in several ways. You can't dig it cleanly, and the frozen clods you break off won't settle around roots. Water in frozen soil is locked as ice, so roots can't draw on it. A bare root sitting in an air pocket among frozen lumps dries out and dies back.

The risk runs past planting day. Soil that freezes and thaws repeatedly expands and contracts. Loose backfill around a new crown moves more than settled ground does, and it can lift a shallow perennial or rhubarb crown out of the soil. Exposed roots then dry in the wind. Firming the backfill and mulching after planting slows that cycle.

What wet soil does to a new planting

Roots need air as much as water. Soil pores hold both, and after heavy rain water fills them. A root sitting in saturated soil runs short of oxygen and starts to rot. A dormant root has little stored energy to regrow what it loses.

Digging makes wet soil worse. A spade smears wet clay along the sides of the hole and leaves a slick wall. Water from the surrounding ground drains into the loose backfill and stays there, because the smeared wall sheds it slowly. The new tree ends up sitting in a sump. Walking on a wet bed also presses the pores shut, and that compaction lasts well past the season.

A squeeze test tells you where your soil stands. Take a handful from planting depth and close your fist. If water seeps out or the soil smears into a shiny ribbon, it's too wet. If it holds a shape and then crumbles when you press it, you can dig.

What our garden shows

Our garden sits in zone 7a. The coldest night we recorded in 2026 was 3°F, on January 9. On an average night, our yard bottoms out 7°F below the forecast low, an offset our station learned from its own readings. A forecast that looks mild enough for digging can still leave our ground crusted with ice. That same offset moves our planning frost dates. The published last spring frost for us is April 28, and the offset pushes it to May 20. In 2026 the final frost our station logged in spring fell on April 30.

Wet weather in our winter came in pulses. January brought 1.73 inches of rain, February 2.88 and March 2.49. February was the wettest of the three, which put our soggiest ground in the middle of bare-root season.

Our soil probes started logging in July, so we have no winter readings to show you. The summer readings still show how differently beds hold water. Through mid-July, August and early September, the driest reading in raised bed 1 was 39% and the wettest was 54%. Over those weeks the ground bed covered a far wider span, bottoming at 32% and topping out at 62%. Our wettest day of the year dropped 2.46 inches, and on August 21, the following day, raised bed 3 climbed to its own 62% peak. The bed that climbs highest after rain is the bed to test before you dig in winter.

How to run the two checks

Each planting day needs two checks. The first asks whether the coming nights will freeze your ground. Siltwell runs frost alerts for every garden, and it looks two days ahead. Each evening at 5 p.m. local time, it takes both forecast lows and applies your site's offset to each one. If either low reaches your garden's threshold, 32°F by default, you get an alert. That gives you two days to finish planting or hold off.

The adjustment fits that alert to your yard. Free accounts take the offset as a number you type in under Settings, Garden, Edit garden. A negative number tells Siltwell your site runs colder than the forecast. For a starting value, the microclimate checker sets readings from home stations near you against the forecast model and returns a likely range. With Pro, a connected weather station lets Siltwell calculate the offset itself. It compares the station's outdoor air temperature with the forecast and settles on a number once the two have overlapped for about 14 days.

Suppose the forecast low for Thursday is 36°F. With our offset of minus 7°F, our yard would reach 29°F, and the surface of an open bed would freeze overnight. The raw forecast would have made it look like a safe night to leave a hole half-dug.

The second check asks whether the bed has drained. The squeeze test works anywhere. With Pro, a soil probe mapped to a bed gets read every 10 minutes, so you can watch a bed fall back after rain and compare it with its own dry-weather readings. Siltwell's soil alerts fire when a bed's two latest readings drop below 25%. They don't warn about wet soil, so for winter planting you read the number yourself. Our guide to soil moisture monitoring covers where to place a probe.

Each probe measures only the small volume of soil touching its tip. It can't tell you whether the subsoil a tree's roots will grow into drains freely. Dig one test hole the day before, and if water sits in the bottom, plant somewhere higher or wait.

What to do when the ground isn't ready

Bare-root stock arrives on the nursery's schedule, and the ground may not cooperate. Keep the roots wrapped and damp until you plant, because fine roots dry and die quickly in cold wind.

If the bed stays frozen or wet for days, heel the plants in. Dig a shallow trench in the best-drained spot you have, lay the roots in at a slant, and cover them with loose soil or compost. The plants stay dormant there until a dry, unfrozen spell lets you move them to their final holes.

Container-grown hardy shrubs and perennials are more forgiving. Their roots sit in their own soil, so they can wait in a sheltered corner. Water them before a hard freeze, because moist potting mix holds and passes heat better than dry mix. Our guide on watering before a freeze covers which nights call for it.

Seed sown in cold weather follows different timing, and our guide to sowing a winter garden by your microclimate covers it. For dormant stock, set your microclimate offset today, then watch the next two-day forecast for a dry, unfrozen window to plant.