>> Moving the hose around always catches on those markers and I find the markers everywhere except in the soil.
I forget where I read this one, but it sounds effective.
Identify the corners of the areas where you don't want a hose to drag into a bed.
Hammer in a length of rebar, 6-16 inches, or whatever depth it takes for your soil to get a firm grip. The rebar sticking up out of the ground has to be tall enough to catch the hose as you drag it around. 8"? 12"?
[b]Then drop a length of PVC pipe over that rebar. It should be long enough to hide the rebar from sight.
Now, when you drag a hose around that corner, the rebar will keep it from dragging into the bed and the PVC will spin freely like it had ball bearings, and the hose will go around the corner with very little friction. As if it were in a pulley!
You could fine-tune that by dropping another length of PVC pipe, wider in diameter, over the first PVC, to give you a "bigger pulley".
I don't like dragging hoses, and I like to fiddle with gadgets, so I bought a roll of drip irrigation mainline (black polyethylene, 1/2" is big enough for 240 gallons per hour. $10 for 50 feet. $16 for 100 feet.)
I ran that mainline from my spigot to all my beds, using a few Tee fittings.
Then I added another Tee fitting with male hose threads anywhere I wanted a spare hose spigot!
Plastic "Y" fittings with hose threads AND valves are so cheap that I use those almost everywhere. That give me TWO spigots everywhere, which is surely more than any sane person could want. (I DO use some of the branches for irrigation sprayers or dripline. You can't beat a fine spray or mist for watering a direct-seeded bed!)
Then I cut my existing long hose into several very short lengths, with brass "hose menders" on each end. Each of those shorty-hoses is now used for only 1-2 beds, and I never drag anything more than 15-20 feet.
If I had planned better, I would have used those Ys with valves for every branch of the mainline, and then I would have a spigot at every branch, and not really need any more.
The cost after putting in the mainline is only $3 or $4.50 per double-spigot, plus the hose menders.
http://garden.org/ideas/view/R...
Closeup of Compression Tee on 3/4" mainline with plastic Male hose thread
+ Brass 2-Valve Y (I like brass even if it does cost several dollars more)
+ black plastic EZ-Loc connector to ½" irrigation mainline for spritzing seedling trays & pots
+ cut garden hose with brass Female Hose Mender from Home Depot
