I noticed that villagers had planted seeds on a piece of land that I had accidentally hoed. The plants grew. I then tested this myself on land that was four blocks above the normal ground surface thus without any water source. If I planted seed prior to the farmland going back to earth then all plants grew successfully.
This may not be connected but I also hoed all the paths in a village that I had destroyed - because it is now the easiest way to get rid of paths, and I noticed the quite a few random blocks had become saturated although not near a water source.
I have searched for issues on this subject but couldn't find any.
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Yes, perhaps I should have read the article to find how how it should have worked rather than going on the experiences I had actually playing it for years when it was almost impossible to plant something on unhydrated land and an easy way of removing farmland in villages was to simply remove the water source. Thank you for pointing that out and apologies for me wasting your time. It clearly works as intended now.
Water is not required for farmland crops to grow, although it will speed up the process significantly. As for hydration, aside from having nearby water, farmland can also get hydrated by rain. It is also possible that there are nearby water blocks at the same level as the farm which are hidden from the view (village well, maybe?). You can read more about farmland in the wiki: https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Farmland