Plant growth with NBT tags not working

I'm trying to make some basic crops, but I can't get growth using NBT number tags to work. I'm doing a test that should delete the crop after 5 seconds of being placed, but I can't tell what parts are working or not because either the print statements don't print on every iteration, or the tick isn't running when it should be.

The procedure: https://imgur.com/a/nISR9h5

(i took the print statements out for now)

Edit: I fixed it, I didn't realise plants use a random tick. Still having a couple of issues, like the light level above the crops always returning 0