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Step 7Sustainability
The conker is the horse chestnut's future - every drilled conker is a lost seedling.
On top of that, around half the UK's horse chestnut population is suffering from parasitic and bacterial infections like leaf-miners and "bleeding canker".
So, to play conkers with a clear conscience, don't take all the conkers you see on the ground. Instead, kick a few away from the tree, out of its shade, and gently step on them to press them into the ground, then kick some leaf-litter over them.
You could even take a few and propagate them at home - plant them in pots, in a normal (peat-free) potting compost, and leave them out in the garden to germinate. You could bring them on in a greenhouse, or under a cloche, but make sure you don't let them dry out. From the BBC...
When the seedlings seem tough enough, take them back where they came from, and plant them away from careless feet and out of deep shade, so that, in fifty or a hundred years, your descendants can continue to play conkers.
On top of that, around half the UK's horse chestnut population is suffering from parasitic and bacterial infections like leaf-miners and "bleeding canker".
So, to play conkers with a clear conscience, don't take all the conkers you see on the ground. Instead, kick a few away from the tree, out of its shade, and gently step on them to press them into the ground, then kick some leaf-litter over them.
You could even take a few and propagate them at home - plant them in pots, in a normal (peat-free) potting compost, and leave them out in the garden to germinate. You could bring them on in a greenhouse, or under a cloche, but make sure you don't let them dry out. From the BBC...
Paul Bray asks...
What's the best way to grow a conker tree and an acorn tree, from a conker and an acorn, how long will it take and will they last? Thanks.
Bill replies...
I find the best method Paul is to plant your conker and acorn seeds in a peat and sharp grit sand mixture - in pots or a two inch sheet tray. Cover the seeds with approximately one quarter to half an inch of peat and grit mixture. The pots/seed trays can placed outside in the garden but you will need to cover them with a fine plastic mesh to keep mice at bay. The time of year to plant your seeds is during the autumn when you have collected the seeds and they will start to germinate early spring time when they can be repeated into single pots.
When the seedlings seem tough enough, take them back where they came from, and plant them away from careless feet and out of deep shade, so that, in fifty or a hundred years, your descendants can continue to play conkers.
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See wikipedia.
Nice instructable by the way!
What games did you play?
I'm kidding, of course. Nobody ever got punched in the face :).
(We were some pretty creative kids)
-Y
In America, there isn't really an equivalent, given the lack of quality conkers lying about. The closest game in spirit would be pencil fighting, in which the defender holds his pencil between thumb and forefinger in both hands and the attacker flicks their pencil in an attempt to break the defending pencil in two - which was really just an excuse to not do homework.
Maybe that should be an 'ible.
-Y
- Players took alternate turns, regardless of whether the last swing was a hit or not.
- "strings" was called "snags" and rather than just deciding whose turn it was the players would tug hard on their string in an attempt to pull their opponents conker off the string (or the string out of their hand), thus facilitating a "stampy" opportunity.
- conker scores were not cumulative. If a "sixer" beat a "niner" it just became a "sevener"!
But all the same, a great instructable - brings back great childhood memories!
Nice to see some one bother to catalogue the games 'everybody knows the rules of' . the problem is that not everybody does know them, It is imporant that someone writes them down before there are so few people who DO know, that you lose half the rules or the finer points.
The call for 'strings' that I knew was 'tangles one, two, three. In Birmingham, both methods of scoring were used, which lead to considerable confusion! Also it was considered bad form to deliberately tangle the string and attempt to pull the other conker off.
A player had won when there was no conker remaining on his opponent's string, This meant that it was possible for a very damaged conker to win a fight, only to be completely destroyed on it's next hit.
Any treatment such as holding conkers over from one year to the next, baking or pickling was considered legal, but injecting epoxy resin between the shell and kernel was a definite infringement of the rules, as was having an overlarge knot at the bottom of the conker. This was because you could use it to hit your opponent's conker, rather than letting your conker take the impact.
I had never heard of the 'Stampsies' rule, that would have been regarded as the worst form of cheating imaginable! Likewise 'Scrambles' was new to me.
There are loads of games I played as a kid that are dying a slow death now, partially due to schools being over cautious with health and safety, and partially due to the rise of computer games, (don't get me wrong I LOVE computer games, I spend far too much time with them), but even when I was young there were games that were slowly dying out, Marbles are still out there, but who knows how to play 'Cat's Cradle' now ?
In that case, consider yourself obligated to produce an Instructable!