You may not have heard of the strain Jacks Cleaner, but among collectors of Elite genetics it has become somewhat of an urban legend. This is due to a few factors. The first is I grew it for many years before other respected growers tried it and let me know it was probably the best Sativa Hybrid in existence. In 1997 I had a gathering known in breeder circles as “Jamaica 1” several respected under ground breeder/growers met at my place and we spent 3 days toking testing talking and feasting on BBQ and southern food. We had a un official judging and JC won every first place vote. Now maybe the guys were just being nice because I tossed the gig but I knew at least I had found a great strain. But where did it come from?
I got my first PC in about 1994 it was an Acer 133 and soon found a great deal of information on Cannabis, certainly not anything like today but it led me to grow chats where I met others that shared an interest for growing. One of the first I became close online friends with was a guy with the nick ‘Skoosh’. I was amazed that there was another seriously hard working tax paying Loyal American that waked and baked everyday of his adult life. We swapped stories online, toked while we typed and found out we both love ice cream. He offered me some seeds and over time traded around what we each had. He sent me about 200 seeds of a old strain called Skoosh that was pretty infamous in his circles and I started cracking large treys looking for a keeper. The make up of these seeds were Pluton, Lambs bread, Purple Haze, and Northern Lights. What mix or pattern these crosses occurred I am not sure. Most of what I found was not impressive, super thin spindly sativa’s and mutants with whorled leaves. I did find a few that seemed normal and grew them to maturity. Of all the seeds I started over a period of a year one phenotype stood out. It was a extremely resinous ultra lemon wonder. It reminded me of a house hold cleaner named “Mr Clean” So I named it “The Cleaner”. It had one poor trait and that was weak stems and smaller size. I had not yet read botany and we all thought breeders were smarter than god so 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, Jacks Cleaner is a large heavy producer with ultra white raised trichomes that actually give the plant a gooey appearance. Heavy citrus with over bearing lemon smell and taste I have yet to see anything like it. In 2003 we out crossed the P1 mother with a JC X blueberry offspring and created JC bx. This first stage back cross recently won third place in the 420 cup in Amsterdam by a grower named HOG. It had a 12 day cure and blew everyone away as he was an unknown in there neck of the woods. There is some confusion cause many that have the JC bx misstate the fact and say they have JC leaving off the BX indicating a back cross.