Our Story
The Garden HotZot was invented because too many times I watched my wife (Master Gardener, Landscape Designer and Major Plant Nerd) put on her “weeding” face and head out to spend 2-3 hours weekly doing the gardener’s equivalent of cleaning the toilet.
I decided that there had to be another, easier method for killing weeds – so I started experimenting with different options . . . It had to be organic, fast and easy to use and above all it had to be safe. After many bad ideas, I was making myself an espresso one morning when I hit the wrong switch and a jet of hot water shot out on the counter! That’s what I wanted! That afternoon I went out and bought a half dozen used espresso machines (thanks, Starbucks Barista), tore them apart and put together the first prototype. It was literally a boiler bolted to the end of a one-by-four and it looked dangerous – but it worked! Many versions later we have a hand held espresso machine that cooks weeds with jets of hot water mixed with organic herbicides.
Easier than weeding by hand, safer than glyphosate and torches, the HotZot makes it easy to walk through your yard or garden and kill weeds individually without harming the plants you want to keep and without leaving toxic herbicides in your yard or environment. With a target retail price of $100, the HotZot is a revolutionary new tool in a very old market.
Where can you buy your own HotZot? You can’t, yet – we plan to start shipping Zots in Spring of 2020.
Does boiling water really kill weeds?
These gardening sites say “YES”
GardenWeb
Dave’s Garden
National Gardening Association
Gardening Know How
The Garden Hotzot – Because Weeds Never Sleep
Will it be available in Australia?
Hi Mike – the early models will not be available in Australia because you have a different residential electrical system than we do in the US. Your 220v is twice our 110v. However – you could purchase and use a 220/110 transformer to step it down and then it would work. Or you could wait until we have a 220v version (our commercial version will be 220v) sometime in 2020. I’ll put your name on our mailing list and keep you posted.
This small scale boiler for non-toxic weed fighting is a great idea. I hope it will be obtainable i Norway, the sooner the better.