Mephisto-Strawberry Nuggets

Week #6-Jan 8-Jan 14 1/10-Went to bloom feeding schedule after 5 weeks of veg even though I only see just a tiny pistil or 2 showing. This strain is supposed to bloom quickly so I'm getting a bit worried. It also just does not want to grow upwards and all the growth below top leaves is so dense and bunched up its hard to imagine how any buds can grow there. 1/12-Small sign of hope for this one. The plant looks like it grew a bit over the last couple of days to 7 inches. I attempted to do some LST and pulled down some of the new growth that had been severely bunched together and it looks like it may be paying off. Some of the lower stuff has started to spread out and it looks like there is a little more breathing room in there. However, I still don't see any signs of pre-flowering and we are 40 days in. All the other grows I've seen with this strain were well into pre-flower at this stage. I'm going to give it another week or so to show some signs of flowering and then decide what to do. Had this issue once before and I'm wondering if somehow this seed did not get the autoflowering gene in which case I may try going to 12/12 on the lights to see if that triggers flowering. If not I'm going to turn the lights out permanently on this one. 1/14-Plant looks healthy but still no hint of flowering. Last night I put it on 12/12 to see if I can trick into flowering by treating it like a photoperiod (which is what its acting like). We'll see what happens. This plant has been disappointing/perplexing so far but my gut tells me to hang in there a bit longer.