It would be interesting if the farm timers were a little more flexible. It was somewhat keeping me distracted when I didn't have much to do in other features, and I did an upgrade too soon, not realizing the immense penalty it would give me, now I don't even want to look at it again.
A crop going from 40 minutes to 8 hours is pretty brutal (and from the comments some can go up to 72 for some??). It would be nice if we could adjust the timers ourselves between that minumum up to that max after the upgrade, that way if we'd prefer to check the game more often we still could, thus satisfying both kinds of play styles
I see where you're coming from, as the timers for a lot of the crops can be intimidating. But I recommend only growing those more than 8 hours crops overnight for now, with many smaller harvests of carrot, blueberry, ect. during the day.
Also buying the upgrade to turn off "first crops" was DEFINITELY the right move, as the short timers are also only giving 1/12 as much as they should have been. That tutorial is a nerf that's there to give a feel for the idea without the waits.
TLDR: planet long grow time crops overnight, use shorter times during the day.
And don't worry, new things are unlocked as you progress to make these times much more flexible