Meet Holtwood Hot Peppers

Scotch bonnets, heritage chiles, and superhots from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

In early October 2026, Holtwood Hot Peppers had two boxes left from a picking. One held five pounds of Dragon’s Breath, Naga Morich, and Dorset Naga. In the other were four pounds of Snow White, Puerto Rican Yellow, and Aji Limón. Both came out of the same Pennsylvania farm in the same week. If you were making hot sauce, which box would you have reached for?

At SpiceQuest, our own orders from Holtwood have included Peach Scotch Bonnets, Fatalii, and smoked ghost peppers. We got to know the farm through those purchases. Its weekly harvest notes tell the other half of the story, from the first trays of seedlings indoors to the boxes waiting for the post office to open.

A season at Holtwood

Holtwood Hot Peppers opened for business in 2022, drawing on more than 35 years of pepper-growing experience. The farm sits in northeastern Martic Township, in the hills of Lancaster County. The ground is rocky, with limestone beneath it. Holtwood works compost made on the farm into that soil. The peppers get their start indoors in late winter, while the ground outside is still too cold for them.

The farm kept a running account of its fifth commercial season. In March 2026, some 700 young plants were growing in flats. In May, 18 flats made the move from under LED lights to an outdoor table, where the seedlings could adjust to the open air before planting. That same spring, Holtwood announced its acceptance into Pennsylvania’s PA Preferred program.

Then the weather took a hand. A late freeze pushed planting back, and a heat wave made the plants drop blossoms. By the end of August, Holtwood was filling orders that had backed up while buyers waited for ripe pods. Six weeks later, the farm had 67 pounds of peppers boxed, labeled, and ready to ship in a single dispatch. You can see the crop in Holtwood’s own August field report and October harvest photos.

Seventy varieties and a particular fondness for Scotch bonnets

Holtwood listed 70 varieties for 2026. To see what that means for a cook, start with just the Scotch bonnets. Alongside the Peach Scotch Bonnet we bought, the farm grew Foodarama Red, a cream-colored bonnet, varieties from St. Lucia and Trinidad, and the Jamaican Ministry of Agriculture Scotch Bonnet, usually shortened to MOA. Someone trying to choose a bonnet for a sauce could ask for several by name and taste them side by side.

The farm looks for tropical fruit flavors in its Capsicum chinense peppers, a group that includes habaneros and Scotch bonnets. Its habanero selection alone ranged from Giant White to the orange Oxkutzcabian from the Yucatán. At the hotter end, the August harvest included Yellow 7-Pot Primo and Chocolate Primotalii. Holtwood sells to home cooks as well as spice companies, restaurants, and hot sauce makers, so you can explore that range one mixed box at a time.

What happens to the harvest

Fresh peppers usually come in from late July until the first killing frost. Some leave the farm soon after picking. Other pods get a very different treatment. Holtwood grows heritage chiles from Mexico and the American Southwest as a preservation project, then dries them at low temperatures to retain their color and flavor. The farm packs several varieties together and suggests using them for the red sauce that goes into enchiladas or tamales.

For its smoked hot and superhot mix, Holtwood cleans the pods, removes most of the seeds, and cold-smokes them over applewood, keeping the temperature below 100°F. The farm also sets peppers aside for the months after frost. Those are picked at their peak, stemmed, mostly deseeded, and vacuum-packed by variety for the freezer. A sauce maker looking for one particular pepper in winter can ask the farm what it put away.

The SpiceQuest connection

We’ve sourced peppers from Holtwood across two harvest seasons. In the fall of 2025, we bought Peach Scotch Bonnets and Fatalii from the farm and had both independently tested for heat. We used Holtwood’s Fatalii in some of our SpiceQuest blends. The following season we returned for smoked ghosts and several other peppers. Some of those recent purchases will be featured in future SpiceQuest drops.

Meet Tim Artz, the cook behind the crop

Years before Holtwood opened, Tim Artz was already growing the ingredients for his dinner. In 2010, his Honey Garlic Habanero Wing Sauce topped The Washington Post’s list of its most-viewed recipes for April. The garlic and peppers came from his garden. So did the honey, courtesy of the bees he kept at home.

Tim is an electrical engineer, and his cooking has a particularly hands-on streak. In 2019 he bought a seed packet at his local H Mart labeled simply “hot peppers.” Two plants yielded enough Korean chilies to try making his own gochujang, the fermented pepper paste he used in his kitchen. He dried the pods whole, clipped off their stems with scissors, shook out the seeds, and worked through five blender batches to get the 400 grams of powder he needed. He wrote up the whole experiment, photographs included.

One of our favorite details from his cooking journal is what happened when a batch of Louisiana-style sauce came out too hot. Tim’s usual mix started with serranos, with red Scotch bonnets, Red Savina habaneros, and a few ghost peppers supplying more heat. His fix was to start a second crock with red bell peppers so he could bring the two back into balance. That’s the grower on the other end of a Holtwood order. He knows what it’s like to have a kitchen full of ripe peppers and a very particular idea of how the sauce ought to taste.

Follow the harvest. During the season, Tim posts photos of freshly packed boxes and identifies the peppers inside. Visit Holtwood Hot Peppers to see the latest picking, or check the farm’s variety list and ordering information if you have a particular pepper in mind.