What it does require: substrate, seeds, a one-time larger addition of water (and subsequent smaller additions of water, that even with a significant margin of error would be less than 10 gallons worth), electricity, and fertilizer. To address water loss, we recently added 1.5 gallons worth of water to our 2 foot by 2 foot prototype that had been sitting open for the past 2 months when we reset it. I overestimated the amount of water it required and accidentally overwatered it…

In terms of colonies and ships, it depends on the gravity of the environment. As long as there is some gravity, it should function as expected. In 0 g environments, things get more complicated. That’s one of the challenges we’ll face in the future. NASA explicitly said that 0 g would be addressed in a future iteration of design.

Just to clarify what you mean by "life support," do you mean for food production or for air?