On Wed, 22 Jun 2016 10:56:36 -0700, Davej wrote:

On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 9:25:03 PM UTC-5, Helen Pearson wrote:
I need to be able to water my strawberries from outside the cage. The
cage is quite large, containing 12, 2.5mx1.5m beds.

I thought I could rig up a system for each bed using a loop of soaker
hose attached to a 5 litre container which can be filled from the
outside path. Will there be enough pressure to 'soak'?

So you want to evenly apply 5 liters of water to each 2.5m x 1.5m bed.

I would think that a drip system would be your only hope. A soaker
hose is designed for normal household water pressure, so you would not
have enough pressure from a bucket to operate a ordinary soaker hose.

Yes and no.
Soaker hoses are designed for far lower pressure than most systems.
My recollection is that they're typically used at less than 10psi,
which is (if my conversion arithmetic is correct) would require the
bucket to be about 276" above the emitting surfaces. Entirely
impractical, so the result is the same.

The problem with a drip system is that it is inefficient because a
large portion of the water will simply evaporate before reaching the
plant roots. A system that might work would be a hollow watering stake
buried next to each plant with each stake fed from a hose from the
bucket. This would allow gravity-fed water to more directly reach the
plant roots. This could be expanded to a perforated water pipe pattern
buried at slightly below root depth with filler pipes to the surface.

Water delivery efficiency is an entirely different question.
I'm sure you could come up with an even more efficient system with
hypodermic needles positioned adjacent to the roots, and then declare
your hollow watering stake inefficient. (Just saying all these
efficiencies are relative)

Soaker hoses and drip lines
are much more efficient (particularly for smaller crop plants
spread over large areas) compared to water sprayer systems, especially
if operated on a timer to operate in the early morning hours. They're
widely used in arid zones where water supplies are limited. With
fewer plants with small root systems your watering stake approach may
be superior though a bigger PITA if the garden gets bigger.