Just writing the title of this post makes me smile. Floating tomato gardens! What a concept! And what would they do with the cucumbers? Hang the vines on air hooks?

Maybe not. Maybe that’s why they grow tomatoes on Inle Lake, and not cucumbers.

But tomatoes they do grow, and they grow them in abundance. This region supplies sixty percent of all the tomatoes consumed in Myanmar–a population of 5.5 million people. That’s a lot of tomatoes.

So… The tomatoes are grown in baskets that float in the lake, in long, dense, caged rows. There are problems with this farming technique. The silt that escapes the baskets and the organic waste from the plants are slowly eroding the lake environment, enriching the water so that water hyacinth–lovely, but a devastating weed–is beginning to take over, one of the few plants that can grow in water so organically rich. And then there is the matter of the pesticides… Let’s just say: This is not water you’d want to drink.

Nevertheless, there is an enchanting beauty in these farms.

Mostly it’s the women who work the tomato gardens, weeding and harvesting. They work from their boats.

Occasionally, the tomato gardens frame vistas that have breathtaking rural grace and beauty.