That is a Japanese beetle. Not the easiest creature to control with pesticides but very easy to pluck or knock off into a pail of soapy water. Best if attempted early in the morning as the beetles are sluggish and tend to congregate together.

Oh no! And what else does this creature eat in the garden ?

Yeah, I just read up on them. I now realize what the many grubs were that we saw when we dug the garden beds. And the reason for the brown patches in the grass. Nasty. We have almost 2 acres, can't treat it all. But will have to come up with a plan.

You can try using a milky spore product to control the lawn grubs, which in turn will reduce adult populations significantly. Milky spore is a disease promoted by a naturally occurring bacterium that only targets the larvae of Japanese beetles. It is not harmful to any other soil organisms and perfectly safe to use around pets and small kids.

It is not cheap and treating 2 acres is an investment but it lasts for about 10 years and has excellent effectiveness. August and September are the ideal months to apply as the grubs are most active then.

So far not much progress. Tried to catch some J. beetles early morning on the raspberry shrubs, but there were none to find. Then I sprayed the raspberries, squashes, and sunflowers with insecticidal soap and neem oil which supposedly works on both our cucumber beetles and now also Japanese beetles. But I think that has been a waste of time, (it does kill aphids though on my petunias and geraniums). Around 1 p.m. I found a bunch of both types of beetles munching on our squashes and sunflowers. The yellow bowls with soapy water do catch some cuc beetles, but most congregate now inside the yellow squash flowers. When I try to remove the cuc beetles manually from there, I tend to also damage the flowers. Removing them with tweezers is less damaging but tedious and back breaking. As to the Jap. Beetles, I can't get myself to handle them, unfortunately. My husband collected some, said they bite. Will get some traps for the J. Beetles today.

I will have to spray the milky spores in a few months, that is certain. The big horse farm next to us is not going to do any of it though....nor other neigbors that are not into gardening. I can see why. My consolation is that I did exceptionally well growing garlic this year. Lettuce and kale are wonderful too.

"Oh no! And what else does this creature eat in the garden ?"

In our garden JBs prefer the zinnias, sweet potato leaves, roses, corn tassels, and the persimmon tree leaves. Back when we had grapes and a hazelnut tree they liked both of those leaves too. Skeletonization of the leaves is their specialty.

It seems our J.beeltes are not feeding in the morning.. Their strategy is to feed at different times, and on different plants. A couple of days ago around noon I found our young sand cherry tree covered with J. Beetles. My husband brushed them off the leaves into a bucket with soapy water . But many leaves were sceletonized. The following day they finished off that tree by the time I discovered them early afternoon. This time the colony just flew off when we picked the first bugs. I had checked at noon time, nothing. Not many intact leaves left on that poor tree now. In spring a rabbit had already chewed off several bottom stems .....

We had made some traps. following some youtube advice. They dont work at all.