Tired of seeing yet another Gelato hybrid on shelves?
Growers across the world can farm a blast from the past this fall and into the foreseeable future: the famous, deceased breeder Subcool’s strains, including Slymer, Chernobyl, Cherrygasm and Querkle. These strains live on through his understudy Will “Still Will” Rouland under the name Subcool’s The Dank.
Subcool (aka Montgomery Ball) specialized in fruity, tasty, uniquely vigorous, high-yield, sativa-dominant plants. Subcool generally eschewed the hype of the ’90s and ’00s, like OG, Chem and Diesel. He seemingly never touched Cookies and never saw Zkittlez.
Subcool died in 2020, but Subcool’s The Dank has blossomed over the last two years with a mission to keep the influential, celebrity breeder’s name alive forever.
“It’s going great,” Rouland, a 38-year-old Oklahoma resident and operator of Subcool’s The Dank, said.
Anyone looking for ’90s or ’00s sativas should start popping these packs and blast off. Let’s make weed speedy again.
Subcool’s Death and Brand Rebirth
High Times Lifetime Achievement Award winner Subcool was a grower, breeder, author, outlaw and YouTube personality. But his last days were marred by a fire that destroyed his house and 4 million of his seeds, a messy divorce, a police raid in Arizona and failing health. He died in January 2020 from COVID and a genetic illness that had weakened his lungs.
Rouland entered his orbit as a fan, and then he became an employee, assistant and eventually a partner. Subcool’s son sold the company to Rouland for $4.20. Ever since, Rouland has quietly worked to rebuild and expand on Subcool’s strains, modernizing and stabilizing them for posterity.
Today, Subcool’s The Dank sells across several seed banks (including Brothers Grimm Seeds) in the U.S. and across the globe.
In general, Subcool’s The Dank F2s come from 50 to 100 pre-2017 seeds, hunted down to five males and females that best exemplify the traits Subcool documented and liked in them.
“I like to pick before the fire happened,” Rouland said.
Rouland has 20 staple Subcool strains he is working to bring back in Sub’s vision, using his mentor’s books (“Dank: The Quest for the Very Best Marijuana” and “Dank 2.0: The Quest for the Very Best Marijuana Continues”) and articles to try to match the flavors he was identifying when he would launch strains.
“Really, my job the next five to 10 years is hunting these genetics through F2, F3, F4 and backcrossing to bring it back to what was identified by Sub, but also with nice bag appeal and nice smell,” Rouland said.
This work offers a unique stash of classic sativas in a world dominated by indica-hybrids made from Gelato, Runtz, Permanent Marker, etc.
“Subcool strains are probably the most vigorous, stacked, structured hybrid sativas that I ever came across in my entire life. I’m really lucky,” Rouland said. “Subcool allows me to go back to great, awesome fruity flavors with huge, enormous yields and then cross them into new strains that are Cookies, Doughy, maybe not as vigorous or yielders, and we’re finding awesome bangers through doing that.”
Slymer S1, Querkle F2 and the new Subcool OG F1
Grow some Slymer S1 or Slymer Bx. It’s an arousing, limonene/pinene selection of Chernobyl, which itself comes from (Trainwreck x Trinity) x Jack the Ripper.
“Slymer was a lot of fun,” Rouland said. “It’s Mr. Clean with a super sativa Chernobyl look. It almost goes back to Jack Herer. I don’t like Jack, but I love Slymer.”
He recommends Slymer for outdoor growers. “She’ll run outside awesome,” he said.
The Slymer S1 is nice, but the Slymer Bx “is more important to me,” Rouland said. “The Bx has more Slymer phenos in it.”
For beginners, consider Querkle, another blast from the past that combines Urkle x Space Queen. It’s a Subcool staple and crowd favorite. It’s a squat and rare Subcool indica that yields long, girthy colas. “It’s fun to grow,” Rouland said.
Even better, see Rouland’s modernization of Subcool’s Jesus OG. It marries Jesus to Wi-Fi OG #3.
“It’s frickin’ frosted grenades, bigger than Wi-Fi from the structure of the Jesus, and it’s got some sour cherries. But the gas on it is unmistakable,” Rouland said.
Even more is on tap, including a Cheesequake female, a Cherrygasm crossed to Bloom Seed Co.’s modern Black Maple 22 and a Chernobyl x Piff project.
Rouland, a New York native, is nostalgic for Piffs and its “basement incense crazy terp. It gets me really fucking high. There’s almost no ceiling on the thing,” he said.
Find Subcool’s The Dank on Brothers Grimm Seeds, DC Seedbank, North Atlantic and Multiverse. Next year, the brand will expand to Amsterdam and Spain.
October 2025 Pot Farmer’s Almanac
North America’s outdoor annual crop finishes. Watch and smell daily for peak ripeness, and cut at any hints of mold. Weather outlook: Drier and warmer than average for most of the U.S. Cooler and drier than average in the Northeast. Warmer and wetter than average in the Pacific Northwest. The Hunter’s Moon is Oct. 6.
Written by David Downs (@daviddowns)
