First food grown in space

The first food grown in space was a crop of small spring onions (or scallions), cultivated on the Soviet Salyut 4 space station in 1975. The station was launched on 26 December 1974 with facilities that included a grow-lamp greenhouse called Oasis 1M. The second crew of the station – Pyotr Klimuk and Vitaly Sevastyanov, who remained on board from 24 May to 26 July 1975 – successfully grew a crop of roughly 20-cm-long (7.8-inch) spring onions, which they ate as part of a meal on Sevastyanov's birthday on 8 July 1975.

The first crew of Salyut 4, Aleksei Gubarev and Georgi Grechko, attempted to grow a crop of peas, but only four reached maturity. Klimuk and Sevastyanov also attempted to grow peas without success before switching to onions. The Oasis 1M was an upgraded version of the Oasis 1, a greenhouse that was first flown on the Kosmos-368 uncrewed mission. It was used to grow some plants on the Salyut 1 station in 1971, but the crew did not eat anything grown in orbit.