Should you plant fruit in bad weather?

If you receive fruit when snow, frost or heavy rains are forecast, then you’ll be better off to temporarily plant your fruit in pots of compost (if they arrive bare-rooted) or leave them in their original pots for a little while. Leave them undercover somewhere outside – in an unheated greenhouse or back porch would be perfect, or you could just pop them against a wall or shed for shelter.

When the weather eases (and the ground is no longer frozen hard or waterlogged) you can pop them in the ground or outside in their pots. It’d be a good idea to add a leaf mulch or use the straw from your delivery to pop around the base to protect them from bad weather in the future.

If you already planted out your fruit then don’t worry too much. Fruit plants naturally shut down for winter as the weather gets too cold, and in most cases a smattering of snow after being planted out won’t do them any harm. That said, they would definitely benefit from having any snow surrounding their roots gently scraped away so that you can add a mulch as above.