Nickwc5,
You can leave them in the buckets and they'll more than likely survive the Winter. I'd never done it before (don't like taking any unnecessary risks) but with all the questions on this forum about just that, I thought I'd leave a couple buckets out over the Winter and they made it fine. If you do eventually plan to put them in the ground I would consider trying to at least get an area prepared now being that the soil is much more willing to be worked. If you try to get it done in the Spring you may run into problems if you have bad weather. A lot of times when the weather doesn't cooperate we feel 'under-the-gun' to get things done and if you have to work really wet soil, you can do a lot of damage to the soil structure, which is very hard to fix. The other benefit of getting them into the Earth at this time is that the crown will get a head start when it come to rooting as those roots will continue to develop until the soil gets too cold for that type of activity. During a cold, wet Spring, the crown just kinda sits there in the muck until the ground temp warms up to initiate root development. You can do it either way but I guess I prefer to try to stack the odds in my favor. You'll do fine either way.
