Are there any ancient or indigenous cultivation techniques you’ve adapted for modern cannabis growing?
I tried to come up with one but realized it might be more of a question of what are the new techniques that ancients did not use. In the grand scheme of things artificial light is new though florists and greenhouse growers were using lanterns and other artificial light sources
Humans started farming crops and animals about 11,000 to 12,000 years ago as they moved away from nomadic hunter-gatherer groups or tribes. It probably did not take them all that long to start to come up with irrigation systems using ditches to bring in water from nearby rivers and lakes. And, about 7,000 years ago the Egyptians started recording the use of containers to grow plants in.
How about greenhouses. People started using greenhouses a long, long time ago. Among the earliest recorded greenhouse was about the time of Christ so figure 2,000 years ago. Then by 1500 CE (AD) growers were heating their greenhouses to have early starts or to extend the harvests later into the season.
Oh, those artificial lights, especially in greenhouses, have been in use since the mid-1800s. Though lighting for indoor gardening probably really took off about a 100 years ago when the growers started to have a dependable source of electricity.
Developing or improving genetics is about as old as the early farming. Most likely the farmers started learning to set aside a portion of the harvest to have seeds for the next year and that would lead some of them to save the best so that the next year's harvest would be better.
Think about corn. It was the average farmers in lower Mexico and Panama area who spent 500 plus years constantly breeding for a corn that tasted good, was juicy and would feed both people and the farm animals that humans depended on as a protein source. Think about it, 500 years to go from a grain or grass plant with a tiny seed to a plant that produces cobs of large tender seeds like we see now. And, the plant is not stable. Without a continuous deliberate effort to keep producing proper "seed corn" the corn we enjoy today would disappear. Makes our attempts to come up with great Cannabis strains look fairly amateurish.
Though, Roma tomatoes are a new thing, only about 60-65 years old.
Even fertilizing plants is an old technique. These early farmers knew that fish buried in the soil helped produce better plants. And gathering manure from their animals and placing it out in the fields was an everyday project. And "night-soil". They knew about composting left over plant material. Even soil amendments are old techniques. Using bio-char to improve soil is about about a 1,000 year old development.