Use growth pulsers under the minicio crops/lamps of fertility/autonomous activators with reinforced watering cans inside to speed up the growth of the crops.
For automation, you can use golems from thaumcraft or mfr planter/harvester/sludge boiler combo to automatically harvest the crops and replant for you.
And yes this age takes a long time to finish, and I suggest you to do the automation, then move on to other stuff (eg. building a turbine from big reactors, thaumcraft, crafting tesseracts, making flux-infused armor with jetplate, etc) while you are waiting for your crops to grow.
EDIT: I mean growth pulsers not pulse extenders(wat)
