Multi-planting citrus trees

I have 4 citrus trees I purchased recently - navel orange, valencia orange, dancy tangerine, and meyer lemon. Someone from one of the place I purchased from said I could plant up to 4 citrus trees in one hole and get a "fruit cocktail" tree effect. I haven't found a whole lot online about this method, so I thought I'd ask if any of you have tried this and if you've had success. I am limited on sunny spots in my yard, so I have to use them wisely. Thanks in advance :)

I would suspect that some would grow faster than the others and would shade them out. Growth would be stunted for all. I would plant 6 feet apart before I would try something like that.

Jujubeetexas is right about the root crowding and competition leading to some stunted growth, but if they are standard and not dwarfed trees that should not be a problem for a home garden. As to any size or growth rate differences..that can be handled with pruning. Most citrus, in a climate they like, are vigorous growers and need lots of pruning in a home garden anyway.

I don't multiplant my citrus but I have a number of stone fruit trees that I have used this method on and it has worked out quite well for me. For personal consumption, most fruit trees produce way more than a family and a few friends can consume. By multi planting and restricting size you get less of each variety of fruit but a wider variety and broader time distribution from your available space. I get fruit year around with my winter producing citrus, several varieties of avocados that produce at different times of the year and stone fruits that ripen on differing schedules all of late spring through summer and then fall for apples and pears. Don.

I bought one of those multiple variety citrus plants a couple years ago from the folks in Bloomington, IL (nursery that goes by several different names and floods you with their catalogs once they get your name and address). I thought it would be the kind where the three varieties would be grafted on to a single root. Not so! Turns out they sell three individual small plants all tied up in a bundle as if it was one plant. It lived about a year or so and all three varieties died. I just wasted my money, so I would not advise trying to put several citrus plants together into a single arrangement.

Yes.
Kelly Nuseries is dirt cheap and the plants are bad. I ordered from them once or twice and some plants were in the mail for 30 days. The plants that did arrive in a timely manner were often dead or dying. They do sell good Serviceberries but I suspect that is because they are hard to kill.

They go by many names but the catalogs are easily spotted because many of the plants are drawn instead of showing pictures.

This place is really a crap shoot and I dont suspect it is run by gardeners.

Thanks for the advice. I ended up planting them about 6' apart. Figured I might like the extra fruit anyway :)