I tried it, and it worked, but not in the way I expected. One tree does well. The other doesn’t and gets taken out or dies. Its all good. I will say that the practice didn’t seem to hurt the shape of the survivor tree much.
Here is a question… did you do anything to the trees? Or was it pretty much survival of the fittest? The reason I ask is due to the same thing I constantly hear with multi graft trees. It appears that if you don’t prune the stronger, take care of, or nurture the weaker tree you’ll end up exactly like that, a single tree. You need to constantly be taking care of the grouping. That involves making sure that one variety doesn’t take over the other. If you let one variety take over its only common sense the weaker will be shaded out, nutrient deprived, and ultimately end up a goner.
That’s not to say what anyone does is wrong, some people plant and forget, some plant and take care of only when a glaring problem arises, and others like me are out there every day like loons looking over their trees multiple times a day. I had the same issue with my 4-in-1’s. The trees on the east side out grew the ones on the west side. I pruned 2 times last season, and this winter came down harder on those offenders. Tipped the west side, and took off about 1-2 feet of growth on the east.
To each their own though.
Intensively planting is good if you are really tight with garden space. Or want to maximize the yield over space. It is also labor intensive on maintenance.
I have a large yard, so my trees are planted like landscape trees. They are 15’ to 20’ apart.
From memory, O’henry tree died, Fantastic Elberta lived. Mericrest nectarine got taken out, not soon enough, Redhaven stayed.
No experience with multigraft, but the unproductive parts have a vigor advantage. Lots of good varieties are not vigorous.
I really don’t have a problem balancing grafted trees. The most vigorous grafts face north. This helps a lot. They are growing at the same pace now.
I know this isn’t always possible to know. Each one of my grafts is one scaffold, so even if all scaffolds were the same, one would still need to balance. You’re always going to have to keep the south facing scaffolds in check no matter what it is on any tree.
One of the reasons I’m doing it is for more variety in the small space I have. I don’t need 300 fruits of each cultivar. 75 of 4 types would be much better. Or whatever they produce, 5 of each would be better than 20 of one.
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Two trees in one hole would just be a small hedgerow. Multiple trees in one hole is the primary tenet of BYOC. Pruning is summed up as:
Multi-plantings:thin out the center to allow plenty of sunlight into the interior of the group of trees.
In my case, I have a raised planter on the South side of the house that once had a fruitless mulberry tree, but was perfect for a multi-planting. I planted three peaches on 18" centers: Here they are a couple of Winters ago:
They leaf out to make a somewhat solid mass. Here they are riding out the blast furnace heat of August last year (in the top right corner of the picture):
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Very beautiful yard, Clint. And, a perfect example of why we folks in California, with limited growing space, like to use this BYOC technique. That, and the fact that our humidity levels allow us to do so 
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High sunlight is just as important as low humidity in making multiple trees per hole work. I have both and prefer a closely spaced hedgerow. But mine are all orchard like plantings in rows. In landscape plantings the multiple trees per hole idea comes into it’s own. BYOC is mainly aimed at CA and more so Southern CA.
I agree, but some of it can be used here. Well modifications of the style. MSU has methods of it’s own that work better here to keep trees small. The only fruit tree I use for hedges is Cornus mas, a dogwood. Others do use anything, but I would rather not. Just too much disease around. Ancient English espalier techniques work good here too, and look fantastic. To me it is more ornamental than any other method.
DWN frequently takes their BYOC sideshow circus on the road to non-So-Cal locations such as:
Fayetteville, AR
Tulsa, OK
Sherman, TX
Just because someone thinks BYOC might not work for them (for whatever reason), or has tried it and it didn’t work for them, should not be enough to rule it out completely. Do your own homework and trials. Our host @scottfsmith has used BYOC concepts successfully in his Nor-East locale. He would have to speak to whatever successes and/or failures he’s encountered. If you’re a person that doesn’t like following directions, and prefers winging it or thinks they know everything, BYOC isn’t a good thing to try --no matter where you live.
Proclaiming that BYOC can only work in So Cal minimizes my (and others) accomplishments with this method, and worst of all is untrue. Will it work for you in your locale? I don’t know, nobody else can say for sure that it won’t. I can’t say that it would work for someone even here in So Cal if they fit the personality profile detailed above.
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In the east I would say the planting/spacing methods of BYOC work very well, but the pruning methods need to be modified. I started out pretty much following the DWN instructions but got too much wood and disease and too little fruit. I am still evolving my pruning plan and I get a little better each year. Recently I have been experimenting with more “grape style” pruning, a more or less a single fruiting plane about 5’ off the ground. This is done by tying down branches to make umbrella-like scaffolds, and then pruning out all the waterspouts each spring. I had very close stands of euro plums and euro pears that in spite of more thinning cuts were still not producing fruit. But with this umbrella system I have finally been able to start getting them fruiting. With only a single fruiting plane there is a lot less shading going on. For the other less challenging fruits all I really needed to do was more thinning as well as more shoot heading.
Scott
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@scottfsmith, just curious what your fertilizer regimen has been. BYOC calls for very low N, but ample P & K. 3-12-12 is the recommended formulation.
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Too bad you feel like that. I know most eastern methods would not work for you, but I don’t feel bad or even care, let alone feel my mastering of eastern backyard culture is minimized by you not using it.
Right, it’s not really designed for here, agree. Sounds like you developed a modified espalier technique. As fruiting there too is in one plane. Also just to note the English espalier techniques seem to work all over.
I lose close to 25% of all trees to disease before they even fruit, I have grown 5 sweet cherry trees, and so far 5 have a serious disease. I have lost 2 peach trees of 7. And 1 plum tree of 1. I lost them to bacterial or fungal canker, and extreme cold down right just killing them. If I plant 4 in one hole and one develops canker, all will get it, not a good idea. If 8 feet from each other maybe I will get lucky and my other trees will be fine.
Unless you have grown here, it’s hard to give good advice.
I don’t do standard fertilizing as I don’t notice nutrient deficiency issues. Depending on where the trees are they may get some wood chips every few years. The one thing I do is give each tree a handful of Tree Tone which is an organic fertilizer with micronutrients. One handful per tree is basically nothing compared to the pounds of various recommendations, but I figure if there is something the tree is desperately short on it will appreciate it.
Best to view BYOC as an engineered system, just like DWN’s blueberry instructions, drip irrigation, ollas, EarthBoxes and other self irrigating planters. Think cake recipe here. You can mess around with all the variables and end up with varying degrees of failure and/or success. But you can’t say that the recipe, system or “thing” doesn’t work if you don’t actually follow it. Applying your own knowledge, experiences and theories on top of any system just isn’t a proper application of said system.
Following instructions is truly a lost art and well worth practicing. 
I just Googled it, it isn’t a thing.
I’m a strong believer in following recipes… when all else fails. It rarely does.
Same thing in the kitchen- recipes are either guidelines or only for the occasional cook.
Full employment of your senses, creative and cognitive ability is stymied by blindly following recipes- revolt against the machine and know true freedom 
“No one principle is good for all situations” --Chuang Tzu
In serious mode here, commercial growers are burdened by the requirement of highest efficiency and are thus virtual slaves to university guidelines. This is a strong trend in our culture and economy where careful measurements are made to evaluate various methods and to determine scientifically the best (most productive and profitable) way to do EVERYTHING.
Traditional French wine making requires the use of the nose, the eyes and the palate to create an excellent bottle of wine. CA winemakers developed methods using careful calculations with instruments to make a better bottle of wine for a cheaper price. A lot more interesting to make wine the old fashioned French way but who buys wine for the winemakers enjoyment?
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I assume that root competition will dwarf the trees. Is there a guideline for the dwarfing factor?
MrClint, following DWN’s BYOC recipe exactly in the east is like following a standard cake recipe exactly at high altitude - recipes are implicitly parameterized by the location in which they were made and they may not translate to a new location. I was at a California vineyard a few years ago and the guy told me he usually does one disease spray a year on his organic grapes. Out here its barely even possible to grow organic grapes with ten times as many sprays, and its not because people are not following the correct spraying recipe.
There is probably a eastern version of BYOC which could be turned into a recipe, but its going to differ from the DWN recipe in several ways due to sun, soil, humidity, temperature, and other differences.
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