i have had trouble with individual drip emitters plugging up, but have good luck with the drip hose that has the emitters built into them. i believe i got mine from drip works. it comes in big spools. if you already have water to the beds, it's easy to use pvc and build a shut off right at the bed itself. for crops like strawberries, i've had good luck using micro-sprayers.

I'm using dripline  1/4" tubing with laser cut incisions about every six inches  I picked up at Ace Hardware. The stuff comes tightly coiled, so it would be impossible to keep it straight unless you pin it down somehow, even if it's been in the sun for a while.

As an aside, when we had our backyard landscaped last summer I had them go ahead and run 3/4" line on it's own valve out to where the garden would be. They installed seven ten foot lengths of dripline directly from the buried main line. I turned it on for the first time a week and a half ago when I completed my first square foot box; I noticed this last weekend that the area where the dripline emerged from the ground had become a sodden mess. A plug or three and replacing dripline with normal drip hose and the problem is solved. And I'm actually reusing the landscaper's dripline in my first box, but it still won't stay straight, even after a summer of Southern Arizona heat.

Anyway, I've got two short lengths of 1/4" tubing coming off of the 3/4" line going to my box. Each one has a small micro-valve, and then goes to a tee. Out of the two tee's come four ten foot lengths of dripline, that I have coiled throughout the box. I'm still trying to figure out how long to water and, as the summer attacks, I'm sure I'll be adjusting the water duration weekly. It's quite possible I have too much hose in such a small area, but I think it'll work out well, especially once my seeds germinate and I can lay down a layer of straw mulch.

One downside that I do see is that I don't have a fine a level of control as I may need later in the season. For example, I've got tomatoes and onions (among others) in the same box, and my understanding is that you're supposed to stop watering onions when the stalks turn brown, something that would be bad for the tomatoes and other veggies. Oh, well, I'm sure I'll figure out something by then ...

I'm not just sure what you mean about the onion stalks turning brown. If they are brown all the way then it's time to pull them out and hang them up in a dark, reasonably dry, place, no sense in leaving them in the soil when you could be digging in a trowel full of compost and planting something new there.

You know, I've searched and searched, and can't seem to find the reference I was thinking about. I thought I read about some root vegetable  and I thought it was onions  that, as they neared harvest, needed to have their water source drastically curtailed. Hmmm ... Oh, well, sorry about that ...

It is true that onions should have their water supply decreased as they are getting ready for harvest. The reason is the more water in the bulb, the shorter it will keep in storage.

However, there is no controlling the rain so I really don't worry about it. ;-)

Conversely, the more water in the bulb, the sweeter/milder it will taste. The onion variety has a big affect on sweetness as well, but so does water content.

Something else to think about is that if the green top portion is browning, it is no longer photosynthesizing. If it is no longer losing water via the leaf portion, it also isn't drawing water in via the roots. This means the time to dry down the bulbs (if possible) is just as the greenery starts to brown, not once the whole top is brown and falling over. This would be well past optimal harvest time.