Burley tobacco growers have reported increasing problems with lateral growth of shoots arising near the base of the plant, often referred to as "ground suckers". Ground suckers may reduce yields and add to labor costs when workers are harvesting or stripping the crop. Float plants are often blamed for the increase with many growers observing their problems increased when they began using float plants. We have observed that a large number of growers have difficulty planting float plant deeply due to poor soil preparation and/or lack of appropriate adjustments on their transplanters. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of planting depth on the occurrence of ground suckers and the yield of Burley tobacco. Floattransplants (var. KT 204LC) were grown in a typical double layer greenhouse in the spring of each year. They were transplanted to the field in late May or early June using a 2 row model 5000 Mechanical transplanter with adjustable skid. Planting depth was varied by raising or lowering the skids. At the "shallow" setting the goal was to barely cover the root ball of the float plant, with the top of the root ball ¼ inch or less below the surface. At the deep setting the top of the root ball was at least ¾ to 1 inch below the soil surface. In most years the deep set plant became established much quicker and had better early growth than the shallow set. By midseason ground suckers were more prevalent on the shallow set. Deep set plants bloomed on average about one week earlier that the shallow set. At harvest time ground suckers that were large enough to be speared were harvested and kept separate from the rest of the plot. In two out of three years there were significantly more ground suckers on the shallow set plants. Total yield including leaf stripped from ground suckers was similar across planting depths, however a larger proportion of the yield on shallow set plants was from ground suckers. This study has shown that ground sucker problems can be reduced or eliminated by deeper planting.