Back in the Haze
Founded in Amsterdam by Karel Schelfhout in 1985, the Super Sativa Seed Club (SSSC) was one of the first companies to sell seeds directly to the public through its catalog as well as ads in the back of High Times. In fact, the SSSC was only the second cannabis-seed company, after the Seed Bank, to operate openly in the Netherlands. At that time, Karel was a squatter, taking over abandoned properties and fixing them up to be habitable as well as turning them into some of the very first indoor growing facilities in Europe. In these growrooms, Karel and his compatriots pioneered and developed the techniques to grow indoors using horticultural lighting, rockwool mediums and mineral nutrients in liquid solutions delivered directly to oxygenated plant roots.
Back then, “Sam the Skunkman,” a legendary breeder from America, had recently moved to Amsterdam from California and gifted Karel with his Original Haze and Skunk #1 seeds. Those varieties, as well as some seeds received from Nevil Schoenmakers of the Seed Bank, became the building blocks of the SSSC catalog of strains.
Business quickly took off, and between 1985 and 1987 the SSSC sold millions of seeds all over the world. Karel’s mission was to “spread cannabis seeds around the world and empower cannabis consumers to grow their own cannabis from the very best genetics.” However, due to the rapid rise of the company, and the paranoia that came with it, his relationship with his business partner disintegrated and the SSSC folded.
Luckily, Karel held on to the most important genetics for more than 80 years, patiently waiting to return to the cannabis-breeding community once the political and legal climate became more tolerable. During