Bridge Grafting a Girdled Loquat Tree

What do you do when a friend helping out accidentally girdles one of your rare varieties of loquat tree with a string trimmer?

Other than publicly humiliate the poor soul on your hugely popular gardening blog, that is.

Here's the damage:

Ouch. That isn't going to make it without an intervention. Beneath the thin outer back of a tree are the vessels that bring water and nutrients up and down the trunk from the roots to the crown and back again.

So, not having any options other than surgery or letting the tree die, I chose to try and "bridge graft" across the damaged area. This requires cutting and connecting some strips of healthy living bark from the trunk below to the trunk above.

Here's a piece of healthy bark cut from another loquat tree. In the background, you can see another piece I cut and attached. It takes a sure hand, a razorblade and some kind of grafting tape.

I cut three pieces and attached them to the trunk, cutting another half inch or more above and below the wound and popping in the new pieces of bark.

It still looks "ouch" and I'm not sure this will work, but it's better than doing nothing. After attaching the pieces, I wrapped the entire wound area with nice, thick pieces of electrical tape.

Now all I can do is pray the grafts take.

For more info on bridge grafting, check this out. I probably didn't do it right... but loquats are very resilient.

God... please save this tree!