• bluegrasses
• bentgrasses
• fescues
• ryegrasses

Among the common warm season turf grasses are:

• Bermudagrass
• Saint-Augustinegrass
• zoysiagrass
• buffalograss

There will be some fall lawn maintenance you'll have to do regardless of the type of grass on your lawn. Let's look at these tasks first:

• Apply herbicides to broadleaf weeds
• Correct soil pH: if your lawn is not performing well, have your soil tested. If the soil test should show a need to reduce acidity, apply lime now. If alkalinity needs to be reduced, apply sulfur.
• Thatch removal: dethatch your lawn, by raking; for bad cases of soil compaction, you may have to employ the technique known as core aeration, for which lawn equipment known as "aerators" can be bought or rented
• Rake leaves, or use a leaf vacuum, lest the leaves smother your grass over the winter
• Lawn equipment care: make sure to drain old gas out of lawn mowers after last mowing

Fall lawn care for cool season grasses entails ensuring that lawns receive enough fall water to carry them through the long winter. Don't think that because the temperatures outside are no longer high, you can forget about watering in the autumn. Another fall lawn care tip that applies specifically to the maintenance of cool season grasses is fertilization. Apply 1 pound of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet of lawn. Or purchase a product that has a low middle number for NPK. 

Conversely, avoid fertilizing a warm season turf grass in the autumn. The latter undergoes a hardening-off process during this time of year to prepare it for winter. Fertilizing warm season grasses in the fall may interfere with that hardening-off process. 

So what fall lawn care tasks should you be performing for warm season grasses? By over seeding with annual winter ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum), homeowners whose lawns are composed of warm season grasses can enjoy a green carpet during the winter, instead of having to look at a brown lawn. But when you buy the seed, be sure to ask for the annual, not the perennial. Annual winter ryegrass will die back when summer's heat returns, turning over the lawn once again to the warm season grasses. This exit is a timely one. The problem with the perennial winter ryegrass is that it doesn't go away, competing with your warm season grasses for sunlight, water and nutrients. 

Lawns composed of cool season grasses can also profit from over seeding. But in this case, the motivation behind over seeding lawns is not winter cosmetics, but to fix bare patches -- with an eye to next year's lawn.