I ended up doing a fish-in cycle because I did not know better and I was getting a Betta second hand. He came with a tiny little Betta tank and I meant well and set up a 10 gallon for him!
It was a lot of work doing all those water changes every day, but he lived to be 3 years old, so we were lucky!
Plants don't like Ammonia very well, so it is best to wait until your tank is cycled. Especially if you're doing the fish-less cycle, because the Ammonia levels get quite high.
If you like bogwood (driftwood) you could purchase one now though and start soaking it! It takes a few weeks for it to stop leaching colour (tannin) into the water, and for it to get bogged up with water so it will stay down!
If you have a container you could keep plants in you could place them in there as a sort of quarantine for a couple of weeks before your tank is cycled! Pond snails can become quite a pest in a tank, and they love to hitch-hike on new plants! Just make sure to change the water now and then!
Oh, just to explain the plants in the big tank: we kept upgrading the tanks and transferring filter media over, so I never really had to cycle a tank again!
