They may grow mold and break down a bit, but not enough to be noticible or cause a real loss.

Why add as a layer later? You can add them NOW- as you get them. That's the beauty of coffee grounds (of course- I add lots of stuff directly like that, including stale bread, leaves, bunny box contents...)

i actually am waiting for a little nicer weather it has been 40's and 50's here and i need to take out alot of rocks. i just moved in and my beds are all sand rocks and very little soil. so i am taking the top layer of rocks off and doing a lasagna garden. i figured I can start collecting now and when i have the bed ready i will have evrything i need for a good start. thank you for your response.

I keep my offices coffee grounds it fills up every two weeks in a 5 gallon bucket. I dont see any breakdown between that time and the time Im throwing it in the compost....

I'm new at this and looking at planting my first garden with the lasagna method, assuming I am able to find newspaper and leaves for free from somewhere (I have access to plenty of horse manure for free).

I learned alot reading this site last night and much mention of using used coffee grounds.

One question, perhaps stupid though, is the caffeine gone from the used grounds? If I spread coffee grounds all over my garden of greens will I be eating caffeinated collards?

There may still be caffeine in the grounds, but it won't be in any of the plants that grow in them.

Believe it or not Starbucks has a whole page devoted to composting with cofee grounds (http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/compost.asp)

I just dump my used grinds in an empty coffee can on the pantry shelf near the unused grinds. I empty it about every 5-6 days this time of year. I have never seen the mold. Some over on the experiments forum write of an orange mold. I would love to see it.

hotlink to starbucks

People grow edible mushrooms on containers of UCG. Stamets writes about it in Mycelium Running.