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Friday Anything Goes at the Sticky's :
A New Promo
Every Friday until Sunday at midnight
Friday Anything Goes at the Sticky's :
A New Promo
Every Friday until Sunday at midnight
I was born in 1989. For many people of my generation, Blueberry is a legend, a genetic monument, a strain that immediately evokes a sweet aroma, notes of wild berries, and an inimitable cerebral and physical relaxation. And like many, I grew up with the idea that this strain had only one father: DJ Short.
That's what the books, the interviews, the official articles say. But then, a reliable contact made me doubt, and I started digging, cross-checking the information, comparing testimonies over several weeks. And what I discovered was a story far more complex and nuanced than the one we're being told.
When we look beyond the myths and marketed narratives, another truth emerges. A more complex, richer, and perhaps more accurate truth. A truth in which forgotten heroes like Heime Cheeba deserve to be brought back to light.
Officially, DJ Short is credited as the creator of the Blueberry we know, distributed via Dutch Passion or Legends Seeds. On his website and interviews, he says he began experimenting with cannabis cultivation around 1978, and that by 1981, he had already identified the magic pheno that would become Blueberry.
This pheno was born from a cross between a Highland Thai, a Chocolate Thai, an Oaxacan Gold, and an Afghan Indica. At the time, he was working in a small room in his apartment, with few resources, selecting from seeds from Mexican "ditch weed" (low-potency and often unstable varieties) and it comes from his own mouth...
He can talk to you for hours about blending selections or other companies that steal names... But to say the real origin of BlueBerry, he is not really capable or even incapable of doing so, probably due to an ego problem... Or money... LOL
Things are starting to get a little unstable. Don't you think????
Let's take a step back. How can we explain that, in just three years, with limited space and resources, DJ Short was able to create one of the most iconic strains in the history of cannabis? Seriously? This kind of result usually requires years of massive selection, backcrossing, thousands of tested seeds, and a huge amount of space.
“Apart from luck, which in my eyes does not exist, I do not see any other possibilities… or yes, take seeds that are already well bred and simply do a selection + blending like everyone does in the end lol…”
In the 1970s and 1980s, breeders like Cheeba, Brother Haze, Nevil, and Tom Hill tested between 10,000 and 20,000 seeds per strain over several generations to select a single interesting male or female. It was a laborious, long, demanding task, and reserved for those with access to land, climate, and resources.
While we are led to believe that a guy in his apartment, in a few years, alone, created an ultra-stable line, with a unique aromatic profile and an unprecedented blue color... It is legitimate to ask questions..
And then there is the great and unique Biker Heime Cheeba.
In Pot Cast #68, Cheeba doesn't directly claim to have "created" the Blueberry, in my opinion, so as not to give DJ Short credit. He presents himself as a genetic conservationist, a hands-on man, a guy who preserved, crossed, and observed. But those who knew him know that he was already working with fruity and colorful varieties well before 1978..
In this podcast he talks about his more or less finished lines in 1982, with plants that "bled purple" when cut, Colombians or Mexicans with red hues, a totally Blue aesthetic and vibe, well before the word became branding. He also talks about a breed with his RKS and a Blueberry
He also discusses the genetics of Nevil's Haze and his relationship with him. He also claims to have the unreleased NL9, received directly from Nevil himself, solely for preservation purposes. He has never published it in any form and claims he never will without the express permission of Nevil's family.
Cheeba selected phenos that had red or purple sap.
His "Blue Line" may not have been aromatically the same as DJ Short's, but it shared a color code, a clear visual and anthocyanin signature. DJ Short always said he selected blueberries for their berry aroma.
And here we can make a hypothesis :
It seems that the genetics called "Blueberry" emerged in several places at once, with different interpretations depending on the breeder. DJ Short created a unique, fruity, worked, stabilized line. Heime Cheeba, for his part, had long been cultivating blue-tinted genetics, in a logic of mass preservation. Two approaches. Two visions but perhaps a single origin. It should be noted that to stabilize these old landraces, we weren't talking about F5, but Cheeba's blue line was at F50, so you can imagine that the nuances can change from one batch to another.
In my opinion, Cheeba has enormous respect for culture, the plant and the preservation of strains. He claims to be a preserver more than anything and does not claim to be the creator of the blueberry because he did all the basics but he is not the one who released the final selected strain. He is a bit like a sperm donor but in seeds ahahah. For the Skunk it is the same he is most certainly the creator since this RKS is much skunkier than 95% of others skunks ahaha
In the PotCast, he explains that he was also doing the genetics for the festival, which it called the Alaskan Blueberry Festival. He was asked to create a Blueberry line for the festival, because some Colombian and Mexican Blueberry bleeds red, while the purple Afghani bleeds purple. He said he was working on it... Red + purple = blue?
He talked about the Alaskan Blueberry Festival and a line that had beautiful lavender blue blood at the cut.
I also got the impression he was referring to the color of the flower, although I could be wrong. From what he said, it seems the new version is a cross between Sunset Sherbet and his Purple Afghani.
I don't know Sunset Sherbet, so I have no idea what its flower color is. He says Sunset Sherbet had a blue tint, accentuated by crossing it with Purple Afghani, but he doesn't go into too much detail. If Sunset Sherbet has a blue tint, I suspect Cheeba's Purple Afghani accentuated it.
But then, why does DJ Short never mention Heime Cheeba? Not once in his interviews. Yet, Cheeba was active and present long before him, with the nickname "DJ." He had space, equipment, direct access to landraces, and he worked on a much larger scale.
This detail is troubling for some: according to Cheeba's close friends, Heime was especially known as Dirty Jim or "DJ" in the cannabis community. Short's real name is said to be David John, which also goes by the diminutive "DJ."
Un surnom qui aurait été "emprunté" ?
Coincidence ?
shout-out ?
It’s hard to know, but it raises questions.…
And the trade deals don't help clarify things: DJ Short allegedly sold his Blueberry F5s to Dutch Passion (and later Sagarmatha Seed) for $100,000 and then backed out. Dutch Passion claims to have received and paid for the seeds to David John, but without any real proof of their exclusive origin.
This isn't an anti-DJ Short crusade. It's a call for nuance. For memory. For historical justice.
It's important to know that Cheeba shared these seeds extensively with his biker crew, and this was well-known in the community. Cheeba brought thousands of seeds to the former bikers during these years of selection. DJ Short probably received seeds from one of these bikers or from relatives who were in direct contact with them.
I'm not here to destroy a legend, but to pay homage to the elders who have remained in the shadows. DJ Short is certainly a good blender. But we've been told a too-smooth version of the story. Today, I give Cheeba what is Cheeba's. And I invite all enthusiasts to continue the investigation, to ask the right questions, and to always cross-reference sources.
Respect to all the elders who passed on to us more than seeds: a culture, a passion, a know-how.
Big up to Heime Cheeba, Nevil, Brother Haze, Tom Hill, and everyone who listened to the plant before listening to the market.
Because behind every legendary strain, there are humans. And behind every human, a story that should not be forgotten. The current market prefers to ignore this in order to open the door to opportunists… Don't be surprised if your strains don't have terps… History and knowledge bring you to a higher reality more easily.
My thread on the MrNice.nl forum is about this:Here
PodCast :HERE
#InCheebaWeTrust #CannabisHistory #BlueberryTruth
