Unless you have very low mineral water, I'd be leery of anything that weeps the water through the hose through small pores. They will lime up quickly, even in less than one season and you will have to punch small holes in them or replace them.

For a fairly simple system, you could lay out 1/2 inch black plastic drip hose which you can get in the box home improvement stores among other places. Run a line past all your boxes, put a T in at each box, then run a short length of the hose around your box on top of the ground. Then install 1 gallon per hour (gpm) drippers every foot or so in the black hose snaking through your box. You can install a lot of drippers in a single line before you use up the water capacity of the pipe. If your hydrant is in the middle, you can water each direction separately and should have no trouble watering everything. Running the water for about an hour each direction whenever the soil gets dry an inch or so down should give your beds a good soaking.

So how is the plastic drip hose any better (from being clogged) than the weeper hose that you mention first?

You think I can get everything I need at local home improvement stores? I guess I didn't consider it, I thought the quality wouldn't be as good nor would there be any selection.

thanks!

With the plastic drip hoses you install emitters, either in the hose itself or at the end of small extensions of tubing connected to the hose. In either case, the orifices in the emitters are much larger so they don't lime up as quickly. You can also remove them from the line, turn them around, and blow them out with a stream of water to remove sediment or mineral deposits. The weeper hoses are more like moving water through a sponge and you seem to get plenty of evaporation which leaves all the mineral behind in the sponge. After a bit of time, the minerals plug all the pores until the water stops passing through. If your water is very low in minerals, they this would be less of a problem.

My experience has been that the drip materials in the box stores are usually the same as found in other stores, and they have ample quality for the use. I mention the box stores because they are universal. Depending which town I'm in, I get my supplies from a farm supply store, but if I go to a large city, I will usually stop at a box store as they usually have a little wider selection. Garden centers would also be likely to carry the materials. I've not had any failures other than from getting plugged with sediment in the water, and cleaning that out is an easy fix. In addition, the dripper parts are fairly cheap so the odd replacement costs little.

Currently I'm running a drip line to a row of bushes planted about 5 years ago. Each spring, I open the end of the drip line and flush it out, then a couple times a year I'll remove and reverse-flush any emitters that are too slow. I need to increase the size of the emitters to get more water on, however, because I don't think I'm getting enough water to the bushes. This last summer, I installed a drip line to about a dozen fruit trees that I've planted over the last few years. Hauling each tree 10-15 gallons of water a week was getting too time consuming and wasn't sufficient water as all the trees were suffering. With this line, I wanted to put a fairly high quantity of water on so I just connected the 1/4" extension tubing to the 1/2" main line and ran it to the basin around the trees. I'd turn the water on for anywhere from 20-45 minutes before the well would start running dry, but that would get 20 gal. or so on the trees and the increase showed itself in much happier trees than the past few years. I could just work on a few other things, then come back and turn the pump off and head for home. For your raised beds, you probably wouldn't want to use open extension tubes as that would probably be too much water too fast.

Look up xeriscaping techniques for info on the drip lines, or look up Rainbird for some reading material.

I've never spent more than a few days in a wet climate so the techniques and materials you need to use may differ from what I use.

wow! thanks for all the information. I guess what I mainly need to figure out is: how much water do I want to give these veggies/perennials. I live in the northeast- so I'm guessing its a similar climate (ie: not wet). The perennials AND the veggies will be on the same line most likely- i'll need to take a trip to the store, or do some more research, but I'm guessing I can get different emitters for each application.

Thank you again for clearing things up- i now know exactly what you are talking about. At the house that we used to rent- they already had weeper hose (white hose) set up- and I certainly wanted to never see it again once I set up my own garden. Now I know the terminology. Thanks!

Sounds like you are on the way. Can't say how much you will water, but as a rule you would water when the ground gets dry 1-2 inches down after the plants are growing. This is where the climate difference comes in. You are probably in a 40+- inch annual rainfall area where I am in a 5-7 inch rainfall area. For me, that means that in wet years I can sometimes go 2 weeks without watering, otherwise I have to water thoroughly at least weekly. But, the rule again is to check the soil moisture regardless of your normal rain. You can get a lot of very light showers that add up in the rain guage but don't really add anything to the soil.

If you want to get scientific about it, you can use tee tape or a similar drip tape which you bury in the beds. They have built in emitters, which come with various spacings. You have to use a connector to your hose and my understanding is that you use low pressure--something like 8 psi to operate the system. With it, you would water for short periods every day according to evapotranspiration rates and rainfall, keeping the soil at optimum moisture all the time. Don't think you will find this kind of system in a box store or local garden center, though. The best known brand is Netafim and you could do a search on it. I have a neighbor who put his farm into this type of irrigation because of the water savings it gives, though it is quite expensive.

Good luck