Something unusual is cropping up alongside the tomatoes, eggplant and okra in Scott Byars’ vegetable garden — the elephantine leaves of 30 tobacco plants.

Driven largely by ever-rising tobacco prices, he’s among a growing number of smokers that have turned to their green thumbs to cultivate tobacco plants to blend their own cigarettes, cigars and chew. Byars normally pays $5 for a five-pack of cigars and $3 for a tin of snuff; the seed cost him $9.