So the question, of course, is how do they farm tomatoes and other crops right out in the middle of the lake? They start by gathering lake-bottom weeds from the deeper parts of the lake. The entire process is very labor intensive. They gather the lake weeds in their boats and drive the boats to the farming area of the lake. They then make floating garden beds using the water weeds and anchor the garden beds to the bottom of the lake with bamboo poles. The garden beds rise and fall with the water level, so of course, they are resistant to flooding. They get plenty of water since they are growing in the lake. The lake water is rich in nutrients, from all sorts of sources. It’s basically hydroponic farming. It was started back in the 1960s. Pretty wild.

1. Here are some guys gathering lake-bottom weeds out in a deep section of the lake and piling them in their boat.

2. This guy has a full load of weeds and is heading for the farm to create or add to a garden bed.

3. This guy is now to the tomato farm and if you notice, he is leg-paddling his boat, which I would think would be very heavy with all those wet water weeds.

4. Here you see the garden bed rows anchored by bamboo poles and planted with tomatoes.

5. Our guide let us take off our shoes and climb out of our boat and onto a garden bed. This bed hadn’t been planted yet. You can feel the bed sink down into the water when you stand on it. Vicky sank down to her feet. I sank down to my ankles. But when you think about it, I weigh 200 pounds and I only sank down to my ankles. Tomato plants weigh much less than my 200 pounds. Vicky is looking pretty confident standing on the floating bed.