Have you noticed this?

[nikvoodoo]

- The Colony hasn't been up and running long enough to produce crops (i think it takes about 120 days for a Potato to sprout), plus Marcus said as much.
- The Colony doesn't have so much strife that Marcus needs spies to keep an handle on people. You'd think he'd have people watching each other, but he doesn't. He was clueless that Hope was still there. SOO, people know how to keep their mouths shut or they're simply out of the loop about that "rule."

I think we've established we are still in the Summer of '09 in the story. The end of Season 1 is the Fourth of July and Michael is still commenting about how warm it is outside before they reach the colony. The whole thing started May 9th. If you grant to the end of Summer (late August and into September) and you also take Marcus at his word about how they were defending and building at the same time, it makes sense they haven't got any crops quite yet.

The tricky thing about Marcus is how over confident he is in his position. Arrogance breeds two things: Laziness and Contempt. He's so arrogant and confident in his authority, he doesn't think anyone can over throw him. And as we saw with Victor and a little bit with Amy the seeds of discontent are sewn.