Many species of slugs play an important role in ecosystems by eating dead leaves, fungus, and decaying vegetable material. Other species eat parts of living plants.
Some slugs are predators, eating other slugs and snails, or earthworms.
Most slugs will on occasion also eat carrion, including dead of their own kind.

and they also mention some medical uses..but for the most part, you can keep tossing...

I've never heard anything good about them. In my garden they're highly destructive.

Salt is a messy kill, and seems more cruel than other methods, although I may be completely off base on that assumption.

I use Sluggo (non-toxic to other creatures, which is something you have to be careful about when choosing a slug bait), which is very effective. And this year I learned about using oat bran. Since using the oat bran, I found dead slugs around for the first time. With the Sluggo, they simply disappear.

I've heard about using saucers of beer, sunk into the ground, but that has always seemed like too much work to me. :-)

According to Wikipedia: "... Many species of slugs play an important role in ecosystems by eating dead leaves, fungus, and decaying vegetable material. Other species eat parts of living plants ..."

If you put down salt to kill them you end up with salt in your soil, which you probably don't want.

Regular poison bait for slugs and snails is very dangerous to pets. It smells good to dogs and cats. Our neighbor's puppy died from eating Snarol.

Shallow pans of cheap beer attract slugs/snails and they drown in it. A pie pan works well for this.

I like an iron phosphate product called Sluggo. I get it at the nursery/home improvement store. It is effective, not poisonous to pets, and does not harm the soil.

Good reply, Susan. They are also part of food chains making them food for other animals. (Ducks, frogs, probably opossums, raccoons, etc.). When they die their bodies decompose and enrich the earth.

They are very destructive to many plants, but Pawprints, if they are not affecting the plants in your yard you don't have to worry about it if you don't like to kill things.
Me--I destroy any I find because they ruin some of my garden.

But if you see plants full of holes (especially hostas), you need to get rid of them. Sluggo works pretty well if you put it out every week or so.

Saucers of beer works too, but for me sometimes other animals come and drink it in the night before slugs get their chance.

I know they have their place, but I absolutely hate
them!!! They have just ruined my Hostas. We have
had a cool wet Spring/Summer and they evidently are
loving it.

I destroy them too. They are just....yuck! I have
never had as much trouble as this year.

My brother lives in northern Calif. and they have a lot of slugs in their yard/garden. He uses beer in pie plates. Dig a shallow dip to place plate in so slug doesn't have to climb. He said he could probably get a bunch of them daily but only does it sometimes when he thinks of it.

Slugs are cool, especially big, orange German ones:

Acccccckkkkkkkkkkkk Kathy. Those are gross. They all are really. Kinda like a snake. And I really really hate snakes.

Barb, that cartoon is hilarious!

Looks we are in agreement about using beer or Sluggo to get rid of them, if they are chewing up any plants you grow.

I gave up the slug battle in my garden years ago. They won.

I stopped planting things they liked to eat. Now I have no slug problem in the garden and I rarely see them there. Once in a while, nowadays, I can plant something that they like and get away with it, as there are few of them around to eat it anymore.

When I see them on the deck or walkway, I leave them alone. The only time I do something about them is when I see them crawling up the sliding glass door, leaving a slime trail; then I knock them off with a stick and toss them in the woods.

Disgusting things.

My hostas were being devoured, but I don't kill anything if I don't have to. I read somewhere that slugs don't like copper because it gives them a tiny electrical charge, so I put thin copper around the hostas. They still had some holes in them (the hostas, not the slugs)because the slugs could get to them by going down a stone wall directly onto the leaves, but the situation was definitely better.

Side note....I once...and only once...tried to rescue a slug on the sidewalk from direct hot sunlight by picking it up and moving it. I don't recommend this method. I'd thought I could just wash off the slime, but I ended up having to scrub my fingers with a steel wool pad

Cornmeal is suppose to kill them also.