I hear ya, brother... it's personal now. LOL
Found the first link, had the same insight as you did, tried it, didn't do anything.
Second link is just informing about these "water pads" that don't seem to have any documentation anywhere so everybody is trying to describe them in their own terminology. Very confusing indeed to try and research this topic.
Lastly, yes I filled the water pads with water. If you don't fill them with a bucket, you can't put Agricraft sticks in, nor will a Water Artichoke seed plant in it. Once you fill it with water, you are then able to put the cropsticks onto that block, except then the artichoke seeds aren't accepted by the block. So all I get is an empty block with cropsticks that looks darn good, but won't do a darn thing. LOL and sigh