Use September’s bounty of cantaloupe, honeydew or other local melons in a sweet and tart salad. Credit: Boulder County Farmers Markets

Market Meals is a collaboration between Boulder Reporting Lab and the Boulder County Farmers Markets, featuring weekly seasonal recipes built around ingredients from local growers, ranchers and food producers. Find it in Nibbles every Tuesday and on Boulder Reporting Lab. Sign up to get Nibbles in your inbox.

You may have heard the news: There will not be any apples available at our farmers markets this season. After a warm winter and a late-season freeze, apple growers in Delta County were left without a crop.

While the absence of apples certainly has an impact on the market this fall, we are not left without fruit altogether. A few pears, plums and berries are still making their way to the market, but the last fruit standing this season is melons.

Hot days and cool nights result in the sweetest watermelons and cantaloupes. Dry weather also helps mitigate diseases common to melons. Transform these juicy fruits into a perfect balance of sweet and savory with this simple, late-season salad with locally grown cucumbers and mint.

Cucumber Melon Salad

  • 3 mini English cucumbers, or one small cucumber (peeled if desired), cubed
  • ½ cantaloupe, honeydew or other Colorado melon, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces
  • 1 large lime, juiced 
  • 1½ teaspoons flaky salt
  • ½ teaspoon sesame oil
  • About ⅓ cup crumbled feta cheese
  • 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
  • 8 to 10 fresh mint leaves, chopped

Combine the cucumber and cantaloupe in a bowl. Mix in the lime juice, salt and sesame oil, and let sit for 10 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Plate the salad and top with feta, red pepper flakes and mint.

What’s fresh this week? Farmers are bringing peppers, sweet corn, tomatoes, celery, cucumbers, chard, winter squash, melons, root vegetables, cabbage, broccoli, fresh bouquets, meat, eggs and more to the Boulder Farmers Market and the Longmont Farmers Market this week.

Visiting the Markets

Boulder Farmers Market

  • 13th Street between Arapahoe Ave. and Canyon Blvd.
  • 8 a.m.-2 p.m., Saturdays, April 4-Nov. 21; 3:30-7:30 p.m., Wednesdays, May 6-Oct. 7
  • More information

Longmont Farmers Market

  • Boulder County Fairgrounds
  • 8 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturdays, April 4-Nov. 21
  • More information 

Have a tip or suggestion? Send your comments, questions and ideas to nibbles@boulderreportinglab.org.

John Lehndorff is the Boulder Reporting Lab’s Food Editor. He has hosted Radio Nibbles on KGNU for more than 30 years and co-hosts the monthly Kitchen Table Talk show. In 2026, the Colorado Restaurant Association honored Lehndorff with a Lifetime Achievement Award as the first journalist to be inducted into the Colorado Foodservice Hall of Fame. His Nibbles newsletter earned a first place award in the Colorado Press Association’s 2026 Better News Media Contest. A Boulder-area resident since 1976 and a former restaurant cook and cooking teacher, Lehndorff was the Food and Features Editor of the Daily Camera, Senior Editor at the Aurora Sentinel, and Dining Critic for the Rocky Mountain News. He was Exhibit Historian for the Museum of Boulder’s recent Boulder Eats! exhibit. Author of Denver Dines (a restaurant guide), his writing has appeared in Bluegrass Unlimited, Town & Country and the Washington Post. Lehndorff is the former Executive Director of the American Pie Council and...

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