Punching isn't all that difficult. Sure it might take a couple of hours, but what DIY job around the house doesn't.

The only other suggestion is to use stakes with adjustable flow controls on them and place the spinning emmiters that can spray water upto a 5-6' diameter (but with the flow control, you can knock that down to ablut 18-24"). One stake could water 4 plants so you'd only need about 20 of them. But you're looking at wasted water that will fall between the plants, and 20 different knobs to adjust.

The last suggestion I have to offer is spend some extra money and get tools that will speed up the job. I've never seen them in action, but in catalogs, I've seen where RainBird makes emmiters that you can load into a tool that is sort of like a pair of pliers. You then just insert the emmiters with one squeeze of this tool. I'm sure this setup is way too expensive for they typical home-owner that only has about 20 emmitter total to deal with, but given that you're looking at perhaps as many as 300 emmiters by the time all your jobs are done, it might be worth the $$.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will look into that Rainbird tool because that would really speed up the application. In addition to these plants, we have another 50-100 around the yard that might benefit from it.