@ix3u it’s funny I’ve been hearing a lot about Jack the Ripper lately. I’ve got an opportunity to aquire some Pandora’s Box seeds real soon and I hope to plan on doing that. I ran both JTR and Pandora’s Box in the past… They’re both old classics. JTR was made with Jack’s Cleaner and has a really interesting story.
Jack’s Cleaner’s origin story is wild. Subcool was really into IRC, which is really old school internet chat. He was using it back in the 90s and in a Cannabis related IRC server… he met some fellow enthusiast named Skoosh that sent him some seeds, not knowing exactly what they were… he said they were a mix of possibly Pluton, Lambs bread, Purple Haze, and Northern Lights… Sub’s exact words regarding the lineage of Jack’s Cleaner were. “What mix or pattern these crosses occurred I am not sure.” So basically “Mystery Seeds.” Most seedbanks over the years would document it as being “NL5 x Pluton x Purple Haze x Jack Herer” as if they knew what the lineage was… but that’s not correct… it could be any one of these things or something else entirely. Sub himself said he didn’t know what exactly those seeds were. He grew those random internet seeds that he aquired and found an extremely resinous lemon cleaner pheno that he called “The Cleaner” that he then crossed to a Jack Herer male from Sensi Seeds… and Jack’s Cleaner was born. Sub’s story is actually funny. He said…
“…It was just luck I had a Jack Herer male from Sensi Seeds that I was to lazy to kill and just placed in a dark garage. It refused to die so I placed a small 12” Cleaner clone with him and she produced about 35 seeds. From these I selected the best female and tossed all the males. From these was the Phenotype many now consider to be the holy grail of Cannabis."-Subcool
Regardless of the lineage Jack’s Cleaner would undoubtedly be one of the backbones of TGAs line and would find its way into making some amazing hybrids/crosses such as Jack The Ripper, Agent Orange, Chernobyl, Pandora’s Box, etc… he used it to make so many different crosses… all having copius resin production and really loud smell/flavor profiles. He made a backcross of Jack’s Cleaner using the original Jack’s Cleaner F1 x Jack The Ripper and called it “Jack’s Cleaner II.” I grew that one too. Here was one of my personal JCII plants that was the most Lemonade type pheno I’ve ever had… This plant was a little runty but it had incredible bag appeal but it was grown from a “Twin” one of 2 embryos that came from 1 single seed…
Subcool himself took this JTR shot and posted it in December 2009 and he called it a “JTR Christmas Photo Shoot”
About the same time he also made a YouTube video… one of his firsts that showed off JTR…
I really miss Sub. He made some amazing strains and I tried to grow as many as I could. I grew so many TGA plants… including ones no ones heard of. I even tried an Orange Velvet BX but Agent Orange was better. I probably grew Agent Orange half a dozen times. It wasn’t the most potent but that flavor was phenomenal. My favorite TGA strain has to be the Apollo BX… I was an original tester for that one. Space Dawg and Space Jill (Space Queen F2) were also some top tier, really amazing strains.
I remember waking up early and making my morning cup of coffee and joining the Breedbay chat and Sub would be in there most mornings. He was always very accessible to his fans and was a kind dude that often times would give away seeds to disabled folks and war vets… or to anyone who needed them. He gave away many packs back then. I’ve seen him get involved with charities for Autistic kids and help raise money for different causes and benefits. He was a good guy. He would talk about his COPD for years and kept mentioning that he shouldn’t smoke… but kept smoking… and then eventually he changed to vaping… but that disease eventually took him from us. I am forever greatful of everything I learned along the way from Sub. He really inspired me with all of those super dank strains with the wild flavor descriptions. I honestly was very skeptical the first time I read that Cannabis could resemble anything like fresh peeled Oranges, or Cherries, or Pink Lemonade… but I’ll be damned if his descriptions weren’t spot on and completely accurate. It was mind blowing to me.
To me there was no greater time than when TGA cranked out those seeds made by Sub itself in the late 2000’s. That was a very exciting time period for me. I discovered Subcool, Bodhi, Professor P… all those guys around this time. Some of “The Greats” of the Cannabis World… and they were all on Breedbay… it was really convenient.
One of my favorite things to do had always been to grow seeds from my friends and a lot of their home pollen chucks and a lot of stuff I’ve tried from buddies and amateur breeders were made with at least one parent strain being from a TGA strain. I tried a Blue Widow x Vortex cross a buddy made that was incredible… and a TGA Black Cherry x Blueberry that was probably one of the best strains I’d ever get to try in my life. Subs stuff really works well in pollen chucks and creates some interesting phenos. A guy named Badger who still works with a lot of TGA gear has made a whole bunch of Space Dude and Bloodwreck crosses… I plan on picking some up really soon. I think we’ll be in the 2030s and some of these Genetics will still be relevant because Sub made such a big impact on the world at large.