Since you're a first timer for growing a veggie garden there is a lot to learn to raise a successful crop. Just as a start I'd make sure that the area you want to set it up has plenty of direct sunshine - 6 hours minimum but 8 hours is better. Plus a 2'x4' bed doesn't allow much growth space for both tomatoes and cukes. Staking 1-2 tomato plants and trellising the cukes in such a small area would be a challenge.

Good advice about tomatoes and cukes. You'll want two or three plants of each, and I'd do cherry tomatoes if I were you. These plants are completely freeze intolerant, so plant out after the last possible freeze, which for you is going to be something like late May. Certainly stake and trellis the cherries, but you might just let the cukes spill over the sides and lay on the surrounding area. You ought to get some easy-to-use fertilizer (Miracle-Gro or equivalent) and use that as directed. I assume this bed will be placed outside. By all means seek out some local advice - neighbors, etc. They can see things we can't see here.

Is landscape fabric recommended? best way for water to drain? given the size of the garden, can i only plant one type of vegetable or how many different types can i grow/what veggies? Maybe i will get a separate pot/large planter for the tomatoes.

Stay away from landscape fabric. Bad stuff. You might be pulling weeds out of 8 square feet. That should be very easy. Best way for water to drain is with holes/gaps in the bottom of the bed, which any commercial bed would have supplied. You can plant one plant per square foot. Any plant. Maybe a bit less if they're going to be big.

You can do tomatoes and cukes in that size. How deep is the bed, and how high up is it elevated? Around here elevated bed means the ones on legs, like a raised box. If you didn't mean that, sorry for misunderstanding. If it's a raised bed, like it sits directly on the ground- still how deep is it?

Try looking for tomatoes that are dwarf, container, patio, determinate in descriptors. You might be able to get away with a couple of those. I wouldn't push three till you are more experienced. They will be more managable than many indeterminates can be. They still will need support. Alternatively, plan the trellis space for one heck of an indeterminate.

Whichever tomato you go with- do the opposite cuke. If you are doing a couple smaller plant tomatoes, grow vining cukes up a trellis- use the spacing recommended on the packets. If you do the one indet up the trellis, try a couple bush cucumbers. Again look for the smaller plant descriptors like tomatoes if you choose these.

You can do a smaller plant tomato and a bush cuke if you can't do any trellising. But I would suggest doing one of each this year while you learn. It can be easy to be tempted to do more, but then you can really risk cramming too much into the space. Pick up a couple pretty flowers and herbs to tuck into the rest of the bed. Maybe some lettuce or packet seed of fast growing greens to enjoy. As summer starts to pass more and the tomatoes and cukes are going to be going, you can probably get in a fall round of something- like kale, spinach, radishes- before snow hits.

I second don't do landscape fabric. But if you can get your hands on a stack of cardboard boxes- unwaxed or otherwise coated, clean of plastic or metal, preferably less dye the better. That can work well and still break down over time without leaving you scraps of plastic crap to pick out.

I would recommend you check into having a season extender/protector. This can be as simple as having a couple old sheets or something that can quick cover the bed for frost warnings or stoms, or as fancy as hot caps with frames and openings.

Dirt- ya gotta plan on your dirt too. An elevated or raised bed gets treated a bit differently than just a flat ground garden bed.

You'll need to give a more info for the most useful advice. For example, how deep is the bed? How much sun does this raised bed receive? (This will likely change as you move through spring and summer. Is the bed up against a building? How much water will it receive?

It's elevated - on legs.

https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/greenes-original-cedar-elevated-garden-bed-24-in-x-48-in-x-31-in-rcev2448-1700076

• Size: 24 in. (width) x 48 in. (length) x 31 in. (height)
• Overall product dimensions: 50.5 in. L x 27 in. W x 31 in. tall; inside garden bed size: 47 in. L x 23.75 in. W x 9.6 in.

Hoping it'll receive 6-8 hours of sun (live in NE ohio). Plan to place in backyard. Fence will be nearby. Son & I will be watering (hoping it'll be his daily task over the summer).

Ten inches deep is kinda shallow, and the roots of your larger plants will be seriously competing for nutrients. As I said, get some real all-purpose fertilizer and use as instructed. If the fence is close enough, you could trellis things up on that. If possible, orient the bed so the long axis is pointed E-W. That will maximize the amount of suniight everyone gets.

I would have to agree --- 9-10inches deep is really quite shallow. Tomatoes will need a lot more room as will many other plants. Some fast growing annual herbs like basil should do well. You could also grow radishes and perhaps a bell pepper plant or two. Some flowering plants like snapdragons and sweet alyssum should do well there. Marigolds should as well. (As long as you don't use any pesticides, the flowers of marigolds would be edible, btw.) Believe leaf lettuce would likely be an okay candidate.

Tomatoes will grow in shallow soil. Anything will, really. You just won't get optimal productivity out of them. Never say never.

People really underestimate how much can be grown in really small pots. I had volunteer tomatoes come up in 8" pots (that were actually dedicated to something else. I let them be and got a dozen or so good sized tomatoes on 1-2' tall plants kept on NW balcony that gets 5-6 hours sunlight for 3/4 months in all.

10 inches deep isn't too bad. You can grow tomatoes- just make sure you stick to the dwarf, container, and patio kinds as suggested. A small tomato plant bred for it can thrive in a 3 gallon pot, so a 10" deep bed would be no problem. Trick might be to find small plants- most of the ones sold at the big box stores tend to be the bigger indet plants, but I know Bonnie offers Patio and Bonnie is a common vendor at a lot of stores. Really look at the tags, and don't make the mistake of thinking a small fruited plant like a cherry automaticaly means the plant will be small. Your cukes will be no problem in 10" deep too. If you are interested in peppers, most of the sweet bells and many of the New-Mex and jalapenos that are popular all are small enough plants that they could grow in that bed- just 1-2 of them, don't crowd too much in your first year learning. Maybe after this year though the winter you can look up and get some seed- there are several good small plant varieties available as seed.

Since it is an elevated bed, you are going to need to treat your dirt like it's full container instead of anything touching the ground. Different folks like different things, from popping open a bag of container mix from the store to Mels mix to a thousand variations of homemade mixes. Fertilizing prefrences run from using all organics or natural forms of fertilizers, to wholly synthetic fertilizers to combos of the two.

Be aware that most totally organic fertilizers act in the long term. That is, they require degradation and time to release nutrients. Synthetics are right-now fertilizers. So, especially in a new bed, I'd start out at least with synthetics.

With Dan's comment in mind .... Personally, not a fan of MiracleGro products. They ALL have fert added and it can often be too much or a waste (getting washed out of the soil with waterings if the plants aren't taking it up yet). Newly planted plants generally DON'T need any fert right away. The act of unpotting from the nursery pot to planting typically damages roots. (Some damage is unavoidable.) Not a big deal as the plant will start making new roots. However, it does mean that during that transition period the plants aren't taking up much fert. so have no need of excess ferts being present.

Actually, newly planted plants, whose roots are not extensive and possibly damaged, are probably more in need of added nutrients than mature plants, at least until fruiting starts. Easy to stunt a plant by making it try to survive with poor nutrient content, and you'll pay for that as the plant tries to mature. We're not talking about excess ferts. We're talking about adequate nutrients.

Most potting mixes w/o fert added already have enough nutrients for a plant that is getting settled in, has been my understanding. Now if you reusing soil, then there is a much higher chance of the soils nutrients having been depleted by the previous occupants.

Actually, most bagged garden soils have some organic material, which usually NPK out to something like 0.1-0.05-0.05. They call that "fertilized". That's pretty thin, and is essentially like 5-10% compost. As noted, that's slow-release fertilizer as well. "Seedlings should be fertilized after they are three inches tall and can be fertilized weekly after that until transplanting."

https://www.extension.iastate.edu/news/gardening-while-isolated-fertilizing-your-seedlings

But if you do bag-your-own at a nursery, which was properly recommended as economical fill, just ask them.

Dan is right- seedlings and transplants need to be fed. Potting mixes without fertilizers are usually sterile and have zilch for food for seedlings. That's why many manufacturers add fertilizer to potting mixes. If one is using a potting mix that has fertilizer, it's not always necessary to give a new seedling/transplant additional feed, and sometimes still recommended if it's slower release fertilizer in the mix. If one is using a mix without fertilizer then the seedlings for sure need to be getting fertilized fairly quickly after they start developing leaf and root structures. A seed can only feed itself for so long till it needs to be fed. The notion of the struggling seedling making a heartier plant is an old wives tale for most common veggies and a lot of other plants too. What can work for wine grape vines does not work well for a lot of other.

Some folks like to use fertile mixes in their containers that get regularly refreshed or amended, but at this point the OP is going to be getting fresh stuff to fill the bed. BTW OP, note that the volume of your bed is about 6.5 cubic feet. This is a measurement you want to keep in mind as you shop for your dirt. Be it in bags, loose, compressed, whatever- most mediums will be marked or can be sold by the cubic foot. Sometimes it's a pttttht and it's sold by the quart or gallon. Roughly 24-29 quarts for a cubic foot depending on what the stuff is. If you are lucky, you might have a nursery local that can help you. If you need to go big box store, a lot of bagged stuff has handy measurements or charts on the back of the bag to help you figure out how many you need.