Glad you're enjoying it. The grindyness of that point of the pack is indeed alleviated in 0.6 already, thanks to a new version of Agricraft which is not yet publically available. In fact, one of the things currently delaying the release of 0.6 is the public release of said version of Agricraft, but I'm using the time to write more quests and make more tweaks. In 0.6, the essence crops will both grow a bit faster than they currently do, and also be bonemealable. As well as this, magical fertilizer will actually work with all the other magical crops on crop sticks, and as such has a new recipe making it available fairly early.