Jun. 13--Dan Langford no longer has to wait for the ground to dry out before planting his vegetables. Nor does he ever have to again kneel on the ground to harvest, pull out weeds or even set up cages to help his tomatoes grow straight.

To end all of that, Langford turned his garden upside-down and he's not looking back.

"I've been wanting to do this for 10 years, and I've had all these buckets sitting around and I thought, 'Why not?'" Langford said as he admired his creation, adding that he got the idea from an infomercial.

Langford turned 15 five-gallon buckets that he's collected and saved from becoming trash from construction sites into pots for his plants, which include tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries and a variety of peppers.

He drilled a hole in each end of the bucket, put a filter in the top and put the bucket upside-down. He allowed each plant to grow to about 10 inches before turning the bucket over, hanging the plant upside-down off of what used to be a swingset.

"I got tired of tilling and weeding," Langford said. "Now, I don't have to weed, tie the tomatoes up or till."

And the fruits of his labor are showing, literally. All his plants have taken to the new method quite well. One -- strawberries -- was doing so well that now he is working to scare off the birds who stop by for a snack.

Langford, who started gardening at 8 years old, used to enlist the help of his wife, Mona, to take care of their plants.

"I thought [the idea] was great, because he and I both used to work in the garden and now no more weeding. It just tickled me pink," Mona said, chuckling.

Even better, she said it is so low maintenance that Dan does all the work.

Dan has even set up a watering system to make it easier. He placed a sprinkler on top of the swingset and hooks it up to his hose whenever he needs to water his plants. He said that saves time from watering each individual bucket.

"There's a lot of work to do a garden and do it right," Dan said. "I've eliminated a lot of the process by doing this."

For him, this is the way to go. He plans on having even more buckets hanging next year, if this continues to go well. However, his swingset will no longer be his garden's home.

Dan and Mona's daughter is due to have a baby soon, and he plans to return the set to its original purpose. He said he plans to set up another area to hang his garden in the future.

As much as Dan loves to garden, it is just a hobby. His real job is a VIP host at Horseshoe Casino. Though there he has been telling his co-workers about his unique gardening experiment.