Chinampa is a term describing a method of ancient Mesoamerican agriculture which used small, rectangle-shaped areas of fertile arable land to grow crops on the shallow lake beds in the Valley of Mexico. Often referred to as "floating gardens," chinampas were stationary artificial islands that usually measured roughly 30 by 2½ meters, although they were sometimes longer. They were created by staking out the shallow lake bed and then fencing in the rectangle with wattle. The fenced-off are… (More on Chinampas)