Cuckoo-spit, we all know, has nothing to do with the bird. How did it come about that it is so called? Does it appear at the same time as the bird is first heard in these islands? Maybe somebody can tell us. Anyway, there it is, almost the first thing you note as you step out into the back garden. It is everywhere on the new young lavender plants and, outrageously, on the lovely winter savory. It can be blasted off with a spurt of the hose or a hand-held syringe. Of course, the little fellow inside the foam may start all over again on another plant, but hopefully he will be drowned or otherwise disposed of. The spit or foam has a simple abdominal source: the nymphs of the froghopper force air into a fluid excreted from the anus. Meanwhile, it seems, they feed on the sap of the plant they are settled on.
More of a pest are the slugs and snails. If you don't want to lay poison for them, in case it makes its way into a bird's dinner, you can try to protect your herbs, for example, by putting them on a table, setting the legs of that table in saucers or something similar and filling the same with water. You'd be surprised how many slugs and snails still find their way to your precious plants. Or maybe you would not. Woodlice are always with us, especially if you have a greenhouse which is not as rainproof and drip-proof as you would like. But the great nuisance - indeed it's more a danger, in the garden from now on - is the wasp. Fortunately there is a quick spray-on remedy, but even then a wasp sting can be excruciatingly painful and even dangerous. Various ideas have been in circulation for trapping these devils. For example, jamjars hung from branches which contain a mixture of jam and water, or it is said, even beer. The cover has one entry hole of wasp-girth and, once in, they won't get out.
Ideally you would find the wasps' nest and destroy it. One method of trapping and destroying them was given in 1854 in the English Field. A joke? At noon when they are all abroad in search of food you fumigate the hole with sulphur, dig out the comb and destroy everything in it. Then place a wine-bottle half full of water in the hole. On taking it up next morning, writes the Field, you will find every one of that family safe in the trap. Some bottle.